¿Qué diferencias hay entre un audífono y un auricular?
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 lo…
Thinking small: needlescopic robots
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 use…
The da Vinci 5 era begins… TORS first impressions
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 touchscreen…
Mediflex ENTrac
Mediflex ENTrac retraction system (mediflex.com) Mediflex retractors (headneckroboticsurgery.com)
Unpacking da Vinci 5… again
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 been…
Twenty years of robotic surgery at Hospital Clínico San Carlos: a celebration and a reminder
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 have…
AI in Otolaryngology-Head&Neck Surgery
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 have…
A surgical robot just finished an operation with almost total autonomy
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 &…
TransOral Robotic Supraglottic Laryngectomy 2026
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 have…
Single-Port robotics: why Head&Neck surgeons are paying attention
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 on…
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