Author Archives: Jose Granell

En abril de 2015, la Agencia Española de Medicamentos y Productos Sanitarios (AEMPS) publicó una nota informativa para aclarar una confusión que empezaba a hacerse frecuente: la diferencia entre un audífono y un amplificador de sonido. La advertencia respondía a la proliferación de dispositivos electrónicos que se comercializaban como “audífonos” cuando, en realidad, no loContinue reading “¿Qué diferencias hay entre un audífono y un auricular?”

I just had a Zoom talk with Ethan Wilke, Jain Aabhas and Alejandro Chara, a research team from Vanderbilt university (https://www.medicalengineeringlab.com/), Nashville, Tennessee. They are working on a project in the frame of NIH sponsored research. Their latest work focuses on what is known as needlescopic robots. Needlescopic surgery is generally defined as the useContinue reading “Thinking small: needlescopic robots”

I feel particularly privileged to have access to the new da Vinci 5 in both hospitals where I perform robotic surgery in Madrid (there are only 5 devices in the country right now). So, what was my first clinical impression? Oddly enough, it took me back almost a decade. “Transoral” has disappeared from the touchscreenContinue reading “The da Vinci 5 era begins… TORS first impressions”

Mediflex ENTrac retraction system (mediflex.com) Mediflex retractors (headneckroboticsurgery.com)

On December 17, 2025, I had the privilege of unpacking the first da Vinci surgical robot to arrive in Spain, at Hospital Universitario Rey Juan Carlos. Today, I found myself opening the fifth da Vinci 5 system to arrive in Spain, now at HLA Hospital HLA Universitario Moncloa. I feel incredibly fortunate to have beenContinue reading “Unpacking da Vinci 5… again”

In recent days, the Esther Koplowitz Foundation has highlighted the 20th anniversary of robotic surgery at Hospital Clínico San Carlos in Madrid. A robotic surgical system is an extraordinarily expensive piece of equipment for any hospital. Yet there are different ways to make such technology available to patients. One of them is philanthropy. I haveContinue reading “Twenty years of robotic surgery at Hospital Clínico San Carlos: a celebration and a reminder”

Last week, during the annual meeting of the Asociación Madrileña de Otorrinolaringología (AMORL), the new monograph Artificial Intelligence in Otolaryngology: from the basics to the clinic was presented. We were honored to contribute a chapter on one of the most exciting and disruptive topics in modern surgery: autonomous robotic surgery. For decades, surgical robots haveContinue reading “AI in Otolaryngology-Head&Neck Surgery”

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vincentius-liong_researchers-at-johns-hopkins-university-just-share-7474491472654974977-OvU6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAAaUKucButenP1CHgqkcgkQeyI3-e_tNd1U Jun 22, 2026 Reference Kim JWB, Chen JT, Hansen P, Shi LX, Goldenberg A, Schmidgall S, Scheikl PM, Deguet A, White BM, Tsai R, Cha RJ, Jopling J, Finn C, Krieger A. SRT-H: A hierarchical framework for autonomous surgery via language-conditioned imitation learning. Sci Robot. 2025 Jul 9;10(104):eadt5254. doi: 10.1126/scirobotics.adt5254. More on AI &Continue reading “A surgical robot just finished an operation with almost total autonomy”

Transoral Robotic Surgery (TORS) for supraglottic laryngectomy was the original vision behind the development of TORS by Greg Weinstein and Bert O’Malley more than twenty years ago. The idea was to achieve a precise oncologic resection through a minimally invasive approach that was more reproducible than Transoral Laser Microsurgery for complex cases. Recently, I haveContinue reading “TransOral Robotic Supraglottic Laryngectomy 2026”

Vall d’Hebron has announced the introduction of a new single-port robotic platform. The platform will initially be used in paediatric surgery, urology, and general surgery. Although the official communication does not specify the manufacturer, the platform is the Shurui system developed by the Chinese company Surgerii Robotics, a platform that we have discussed extensively onContinue reading “Single-Port robotics: why Head&Neck surgeons are paying attention”