Live surgery - International congress

Today was the first day of the International Congress on Advances in Urological Surgery and Pharmacology celebrated in Madrid, Hosted by Prof. Vela Navarrete at the Fundación Jiménez Díaz in Madrid. This is one of the biggest National Health System Hospitals in Madrid. This international congress is celebrated yearly in different venues throughout the country.

My role in this congress was to perform a live surgery. I have operated a patient with Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) and a relatively large prostate (80 gram). The surgery was transmitted to the "Aula Magna" at the Hospital, where there were 250 urologists from Spain and many other countries.

Dr. Vela and I had a conversation during the operation that the participants could listen to. We spoke about the advantages of this new high power 80 Watt KTP laser in the treatment of BPH. Dr. Vela mentioned he had had previous experiences with a Neodimium-YAG laser, but the results of this VLAP treatment (Visual Laser Ablation of the Prostate) were not good. He also had experience with a Holmium laser, but he said the procedure of enucleation was too difficult to perform and they abandoned it. The participants were able to see how this new KTP laser achieves the same endoscopic results as the classic TURP (transurethral resection of the prostate), but without the bleeding and the risk of absorption of irrigants nor hiponatremia.

The operation was smooth and easy and the patient was sent to his room directly, tonight they will pull out the catheter I placed in the operating theatre and I am sure he will be discharged tomorrow.

Tomorrow I will participate in a round table in the afternoon where the different surgical techniques, classic and new, for the treatment of BPH will be discussed. I will present the data from the latest studies carried out in the USA and Europe, and I will also comment our experience during the last 30 months and more than 300 patients.



In this photograph, I am with Dr. Ignacio Castillón, director of the laparoscopy unit at the ICUA, that is also invited to this congress as a professor in Urological Laparoscopy, he was so nice to come to theatre to give me some support just before the transmission of the surgery began.
This congress was very well organised and all the medical and nursing personel really spent all their best to make this congress a successful one.