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Spanish hospital deploys four-armed robot in lung transplant

Surgeons at Vall d'Hebron hospital in Barcelona used a four-arm robot dubbed "Da Vinci" to cut a small section of the patient's skin, fat and muscle to remove the damaged lung and insert a new one through an eight-centimetre incision in the lower part of the sternum, just above the diaphragm.

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"We believe it is a technique that will improve patients' life quality, the post-surgery period and reduce pain. We hope this technique will eventually spread to more centres," Albert Jauregui, head of the Thoracic Surgery and Lung Transplants Department at Vall d'Hebron, told reporters on Monday. The pioneering procedure, which until now has only been used to treat lung cancer, was performed on Xavier, a 65-year-old man who required a lung transplant due to pulmonary fibrosis.