For many surgeons, Gregory Weinstein is known as one of the pioneers who developed TransOral Robotic Surgery (TORS) and helped establish it as a new approach for Head&Neck Cancer. For me, his significance is also deeply personal. He was the surgeon who taught me TORS, and the person who helped turn an idea into a clinical programme that would eventually take root in Spain.
In April 2013 I travelled to the University of Pennsylvania to learn from Greg Weinstein and his team, with the aim of establishing a TORS programme in Spain. It was an important moment in my professional life: I was not simply learning to use a new technology, but trying to understand how a new surgical approach could be introduced responsibly into clinical practice.
Christian von Buchwald and his team were there at the same time. He had come from Copenhagen, and the experience would also start to the development of a TORS programme at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen. Back in Spain, the programme at Hospital Universitario Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid would grow out of that same period of learning.
But there is much more than TORS. See Greg Weinstein.
J Granell. Oct 16, 2026
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