World’s First Successful Robotic Lung Transplant

Spain has become the first country in the world to successfully perform a lung transplant using a robot.

“We believe it is a technique that will improve patients’ life quality, the post-surgery period, and reduce pain. We hope this technique will eventually spread to more centers,” says Dr. Albert Jauregui, Head of Thoracic Surgery and Lung Transplant Service at Vall D’hebron Hospital.

A normal lung transplant is considered to be extremely painful and requires ribs to be cut to remove and replace the diseased lung with a healthy human lung from a donor. The new procedure allows for a smaller cut to be made to the rib cage for the robot to place the new lung, aided by 3D cameras and human surgeons. Astonishingly, the world’s first patient to undergo the robotic lung operation claims to have woken up with zero pain following the surgery. Spain is considered to be a world leader in organ transplants, performing around 5 percent of organ donations worldwide in 2021.