Robots are introduced into Madrid operating rooms, assisting 4,747 surgeries in one year.

The use of robots in hospitals in the Community of Madrid is becoming increasingly common. This technology was used in almost 1% of surgeries performed last year. Urology and General and Digestive Surgery are the areas with the highest volume of surgeries and where the application of these techniques has been most established. In the Madrid Health Service (Sermas), robotic surgery is already used in 12 clinical specialties, with emerging use in fields such as neurosurgery.

The region's operating rooms have invested their resources in recent years to equip themselves with this technology and introduce these advances into routine practice. Robots like the Da Vinci offer the possibility of performing less invasive, more precise, and replicable interventions, as they do not depend solely on the surgeon's experience. During 2024, 479,121 surgeries were performed, both scheduled and urgent, according to data provided by the Ministry of Health. Of the total, 4,747 procedures used robotic techniques, representing 0.99% of all surgeries performed in the Community of Madrid. The bulk of the interventions occurred in the areas of Urology and General Surgery, which together account for 57.7% with 1,421 operations and 1,321, respectively.

Behind in terms of the volume of surgeries are specialties such as Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology with 826 procedures, Gynecology with 437 and Thoracic Surgery with 368. These interventions, together with the previous ones , "concentrate 91.1% of robotic procedures, demonstrating maturity in these areas," according to the Health Ministry. On the other hand, in other fields such as Obstetrics (with 149 operations) and Neurosurgery (124), the use of robotics is not widely used in daily practice. Likewise, in Otorhinolaryngology, Pediatric Surgery, Maxillofacial Surgery, Plastic Surgery and Cardiac Surgery, the total number of interventions is 101 cases.

"The presence of 12 different specialties demonstrates the transversality of robotic technology in the healthcare system," the Regional Ministry stated. Likewise, the Department of Health believes that in the future, specialties such as Neurosurgery and Maxillofacial Surgery "represent areas of future growth in robotic surgery." More than a dozen hospitals in the Community of Madrid use these types of advances, including La Paz, 12 de Octubre, La Princesa, Gregorio Marañón, and Ramón y Cajal. Some centers, such as the Infanta Leonor, apply exclusive processes for knee replacement surgeries.

Important milestones in this field have been achieved in the region in recent months , such as the surgery on a 10-month-old baby, the youngest to undergo this technology in Spain. The child was operated on at the 12 de Octubre Hospital for urinary circulation problems that caused frequent infections. This same procedure was repeated last month on another four-month-old child for a kidney obstruction.

On the other hand, progress has also been made in the use of robots for prosthetic placement. Thus, the Infanta Leonor Hospital, along with the Manises Hospital in Valencia, is one of the only centers in Spain to apply these advances in assisted surgery to replace a damaged part of the knee. "Previously, interventions depended on the surgeon's experience. Now, with robot-assisted methods, this factor is not as crucial, as this system provides greater precision and the machine guides the cuts," Dr. Ricardo Larraínzar, head of the Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology Department at the Infanta Leonor University Hospital, explained to this newspaper after performing the intervention.