Trip to Caracas

Last sunday I took a direct flight to Caracas. When I arrived I went to the hotel to spend the night, to start with a four day programme of surgeries in different centers.

The first day I had to visit the Centro Integral de Urologia UNO, with Dr. Gastone Valongo. Dr. Valongo has been performing greenlight operations for more than a year and he wanted to see advanced techniques, so we operated four patients and did four GreenLight prostatic enucleations (GreenLEP) throughout the day.

As this is an ambulatory center, all patients were discharged home carrying a catheter, that would be pulled out the following day in the outpatient clinic. It is very interesting to see the effect in my colleagues to realize how it is perfectly possible to enucleate prostates with this laser and with a side-firing fiber.

Then I was invited to have dinner in a wonderful Italian restaurant... we had a lot of fun and finally I went to bed very tired due to the time difference.

The following day, this morning, I went to the Policlínica La Arboleda, with Dr. Ivanhoe Acero and his team.

There I started with a lecture on GreenLight laser technique and then we did a procedure, that I started and was finished by Dr. Acero, who followed my indications to perform a perfect job.

Now I am at the Hotel, waiting Dr. Acero to pick me up for dinner. Caracas is not very safe to wander around, so I have slept for a while and I took the opportunity to write the blog. More tomorrow.