The first to have treated lung cancer with thoracic robotic surgery is Italian
The first person in the world to have treated lung cancer with robotic thoracic surgery is Italian. It is about Franca Melfi who directs the Robotic Surgery Center of the Aoup in Pisa. Franca Melfi was born in 1959 in Calabria, in Cosenza: she wanted to become a doctor since she was a girl, but her mother opposes her, convinced she is an impossible dream. But the young aspiring doctor does not give up. With the complicity of her father she moves to Pisa where she studies medicine, and then specializes in thoracic surgery. In the 90s she began to deal with robotic surgery at the hospital of Pisa. In this period, hardly anyone in Europe thinks it makes sense to invest in this sector. But she goes on her way: in 2001 she becomes the first person in the world to use robotic surgery to treat lung cancer. For this great innovation you have received numerous international awards. At this point you become a European tutor for robotic thoracic surgery. Over the years you have been involved in opening 22 thoracic lung surgery centers in Europe. She then works hard to expand the use of robots into other industries as well and she makes it. In 2012 you created the largest European robotic surgery center in a public facility in Pisa, with the aim of training the surgeons of the future. Today Franca Melfi is considered one of the pioneers of robotic thoracic surgery.
The new frontiers
The next frontier is the creation, in the Tuscan city, of an international institute for the training not only of young surgeons, but also of clinical engineers, nurses and technicians. All those figures that revolve around the world of robotic surgery and the Da Vinci system. This is the (declared) evolution of the Aoup Robotic Surgery Center directed by the professor Franca Melfi, a center of excellence that already hosts surgeons from all over Europe every week thanks to a consolidated training program in all disciplines. A peculiarity from Pisa, since the dawn of Da Vinci technology and that the visit, in recent months, of Gary Guthart, Chief Executive Officer of Intuitive, the company that produces the Da Vinci robotic surgery system, has only reiterated and confirmed.
“The system was initially ‘designed’ for cardiac surgery and Pisa was equipped with one of the first machines. It was 2001. At the end of 2000 a Da Vinci robot had arrived in Grosseto, another was present at the San Raffaele. But Pisa immediately took a big step forward. The machine was underused and I was lucky enough to be able to apply it to thoracic surgery “Professor Melfi explained to the newspaper La Nazione. The first robotic surgery in the world on a patient with lung cancer, 2001. From here began the long path that saw, surgery after surgery, the inclusion of other specialties. The second machine arrived in 2007, in 2010 the Pisa Center was identified as the center of multispecialist robotic technology for the entire northwestern territory, now it is a recognized training center in the USA and Europe.
Italian excellence
“The one in Pisa is one of the most excellent examples of innovation applied to health that today asks science, technology and medicine for certain, safe, effective answers – adds the professor. Franca Melfi –. These answers cannot arrive without the contribution of research and application to health needs through teaching and continuous training, with the training of surgeons, anesthetists, nurses, technicians, engineers, computer scientists and all the human resources that rotate on a robotic platform around the operating bed and console “.
In Pisa there are four robotic systems supplied. But it is not an end point. “The future lies in the further development of robotic systems capable of integrating other technologies. I am thinking of artificial intelligence but also of big data, of machine learning. This is the way to go in order to be able to be ever more precise and accurate in surgical gestures. But there is more – the words of Franca Melfi to La Nazione -. We have another goal: to teach young surgeons to prevent adverse events with the use of algorithms and through artificial intelligence “.