A Spanish hospital has successfully completed what is believed to be the world’s first fully robotic lung transplant. 

Surgeons at the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona used a four-arm robot dubbed ‘Da Vinci’ to carry out the procedure. The patient was a 65-year-old man called Xavier, requiring a lung transplant due to pulmonary fibrosis, a life-threatening lung disease.  

Typical lung transplants are highly invasive: a 30 cm incision must be made in the chest and multiple ribs broken. This allows surgeons to access a patient’s lung, remove it, and replace it with a healthy lung from a donor. 

But thanks to Da Vinci, the surgeons were able to cut a much smaller access route in the chest without having to break any bones. The new lung was deflated so that it could enter through the tight incision, which was only 8 cm wide. Smaller cuts were made in the side of the ribs to accommodate the robot’s arms and 3D cameras — which give surgeons a 360-degree view inside the lung.