He Vall d’Hebron University Hospital of Barcelona has managed to make the first robotic lung transplant of the world, for what they have use a four-armed robot known as Da Vinci. The transplanted patient is a 65-year-old man who needed a lung transplant due to pulmonary fibrosis.
Conventional lung transplants are highly invasive, requiring a 12-inch-wide incision in the chest, as well as breaking several ribs, in order to remove damaged lungs and replace them with healthy ones.
But thanks to DaVinci, surgeons have been able to do the transplant through a much smaller access route in the chest, just three inches wide, and without having to break any bones. The healthy lung was deflated to fit through the hole. In addition to this hole, small cuts were made on the side of the ribs to place the robot’s arms and 3D cameras, with which surgeons could have a complete view inside the lung area.
Da Vinci medical robots were created at the turn of the century, and today they are used to treat hundreds of thousands of patients every year. His system does not perform surgeries by itself, but is responsible for transferring the movements of the surgeons’ hands in real time, remotely, to a console. But until now it had only been used in one transplant, at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, and only in one part of the lung transplant procedure. In this case, the lung was inserted into place following the traditional method.
But the innovative application of the Vall d’Hebron Hospital team makes the technique less painful for the patient, with a faster and safer postoperative period in which the risk of infection after the intervention is significantly reduced. In addition, the wound produced closes more easily. In effect, because the incision for the transplant was small, the patient is only taking paracetamol after the operation. In conventional lung transplants, during the postoperative period it is necessary to take opioid pain medications, which the patient admits he did not feel on this occasion.
He Doctor Albert Jauregui, Head of the department of thoracic surgery and lung transplants at Vall d’Hebron University Hospitalhas stressed that in the center they believe that «It is a technique that will improve the quality of life of patients, reduce the postoperative period and reduce pain. This operation is not going to be limited to Vall d’Hebron, and that is why we are showing it to the world, because if this technique works, and we believe it does, then it has to be extended, because the most important objective is to help more people«.
The hospital will offer this new technique to other patients who are on the waiting list for lung transplant surgery. In addition, Doctor Jauregui has indicated that he hopes that, in the future, this new technique for lung transplants will become a global standard. For now, the center’s transplant team will be busy refining the procedure further, and members say that the first double lung transplant done using this technique could be done in just a few months.
