Trip to Asia I: Hong Kong

I love to travel, but when I travel to Asia, I do even more. I think that globalization has limited the differences among countries and cities. We all live a similar kind of life, we drive to work, we buy in the same shopping centers. Many times when I travel I do not find much difference between places. But in Asia the differences are much deeper, you really have the feeling of being somewhere exotic and far away.

In this occasion I travelled to Hong Kong to participate in a full day of talks and surgeries, invited by the North District Hospital and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. From the airport I went to the Hospital to see the patients we would operate on the following day, and check that everything was in order for the meeting. Hong Kong is a wonderful city.

The following day I woke up early to go to the hospital. It has wonderful installations and an amazingly well trained personnel. I was positively surprised by the quality of the hospital and its people.

In the photo, with Edison Chung, the distributor of AMS in Hong Kong. A true gentleman and an amazing host. He took me to the hospital and accompanied me during my trip.

The meeting room was packed with urologists and hospital personnel. I did two talks on surgical technique and tips and tricks to obtain a better outcome with greenlight and I did two operations that were retransmitted live to the audience.

We were able to comment the operations live. I first operated a small prostate, about 50 grams, and then a bigger one, approximately 100 grams.

It turned out to be a fantastic session, we had plenty of time to discuss and comment all aspects of the surgical treatment of BPH with the Greenlight laser. The attendees were really interested and stayed there paying attention until the end. Chinese people are usually smaller than me, I had to pack myself into the biggest surgical jacket in the hospital.

That night we had dinner at the Hotel Sheraton, but before the dinner I gave a short talk on the comparison of Greenlight with other laser types. The traditional chinese banquets include 11 diferent courses, so the dinner was amazing. The Hong Kong chinese food is very different to the chinese food we are used to have in Spain.

The next day I had some time to enjoy Hong Kong. I visited a fantastic zoo where I could see the panda bears and other wonders of nature. I had a great time.

And went up to the peak, to see Hong Kong from above. Impressive.

That night I was invited to dine at Dr. Richard Lo's house. He fascinated me with his amazing hospitality and kindness. We enjoyed his cooking talents in the company of other urologists. I left Hong Kong wishing to come back, as always. It is a marvelous city, a pity it is so far from us.

A new technique: Greenlight Enucleation of the Prostate

This is a new technique to treat patients with big benign prostates with optimal results. Instead of vaporizing all the hyperplastic tissue, after a brief preparation, the middle lobe and then lateral lobes are enucleated, thrown into the bladder and later morcelated or fragmented in the bladder to be extracted.

It allows to remove the BPH(Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia) tissue completely, retrieve it for histological analysis and to obtain excellent results, similar to open prostatectomy, but with mininal risk and a hospital stay of 24 hours.

I hope to present this technique at the Spanish National Congress, the European Association of Urology Congress and the American Urological Association Annual Congress.

Article in the Spanish national newspaper ABC

This article was published last saturday in ABC, one of the leading newspapers in Spain. I write about technological acceleration, how medicine is changing exponentially. Sorry, in Spanish.

New trip to Bulgaria

From Beirut I took a plane to Istanbul, and from there I flew to Sofia.

Again I was invited by Dr. Ililya Kalchev to a surgical session where we operated several patients.

This time we were interviewed by the bulgarian TV, very interested in spreading the news about this new cutting edge technology for the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia.

Then I returned to Madrid, I had a lot of clinics and surgeries to attend to.

Surgeries in Lebanon

This is my first visit to Lebanon. I flew to Beirut to participate in a symposium on greenlight with a live surgery link to the audience. This symposium had been organised by the Centre Hospitalier du Nord.

After a brief presentation, we did four operations during the morning.

Between operations I did some short presentations on Greenlight HPS technique and results..

We visited the Hospital, that offers state of the art technological instalations, and then we had a wonderful lunch in a magnificent restaurant in the mountains.

There I met a good friend, a Lebanese urologist who was a resident in London during the time I worked at the Institute of Urology, Dr. Zareh Kassardjian, we had great fun remembering past times.

Then we went back to the hospital and there I helped Dr. Khalil Armache perform two additional operations.

Dr. Armache was kind enough to invite me to have a beer in his house. I finally reached the hotel, very tired after a very intense and interesting surgical session. I slept a few hours and  departed sleepy to Istanbul, where I connected to a flight to Sofia.

World Congress of Endourology, Munich, Germany

This week I traveled to Munich to participate in the World Congress of Endourology. I had to co-chair a session on Greenlight Laser Prostatectomy with Dr. Gerasimos Alivizatos.

There were also my friends Dr. Oliver Reich, Dr. Alexander Bachmann and Dr. Andreas Skolarikos.

It was a very interesting symposium with a lively discussion. I presented some new technical variations for big prostates, as the brand new GreenLEP (Greenlight Laser Enucleation of the prostate), that was welcomed with interest. I was also interviewed for the congress magazine.

I could only stay one day,  because I had the compromise to participate in a congress in Beirut.