This robot reached a lung nodule in Lisbon in just over 40 minutes
The PRR-funded ION platform can navigate to peripheral lung nodules that conventional bronchoscopes struggle to reach. It is the second such unit on the Iberian Peninsula.
A man of about 70 with suspected lung cancer became the first patient in Portugal to undergo a robotic bronchoscopy. The procedure took place at the Portuguese Institute of Oncology in Lisbon and lasted a little over 40 minutes.
The technology is called ION, and it solves a specific problem in respiratory oncology. Nodules that show up in the outer reaches of the lung, far from the main airways, are hard to get to with a conventional bronchoscope. Reaching them often means a needle biopsy through the chest wall, or waiting until the lesion grows enough to be approachable. The robotic platform threads narrow branches with a steadiness no hand can hold, and brings back tissue for analysis earlier.
With lung cancer, earlier is the word that decides everything. It kills more people in Portugal than any other tumour, largely because most diagnoses arrive after the disease has spread.
Why this matters beyond one hospital
The equipment was paid for through Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan, part of the same medical robotics investment that had the institute performing robotic surgery earlier this year. The hospital says it is the second unit of its kind on the Iberian Peninsula, which puts Lisbon in a still small group of European centres with access to the technology.
For now the platform is for diagnosis. The institute expects that in time it will also be able to treat some lesions during the same procedure, sparing the patient a more invasive second trip to theatre.
One piece of context is worth keeping. A 40-minute procedure in a Lisbon hospital does nothing for access if you live four hours away, and the state health service is still being tested on the basics, as the arrival of the first privately run health centre inside the SNS made plain. Even so, when a Portuguese patient no longer has to wait for a nodule to grow, that is a real gain.
By Oliver Grant
Photo: Bextrel / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
