By Dr. Kris Maes, Chairman of the ERUS19 Local Organising Committee
The 16th Meeting of the EAU Robotic Urology Section (ERUS19) will take place from 11 to 13 September 2019 in Lisbon, the breathtaking capital of Portugal. The meeting venue is the Lisbon Congress Centre which is located on the waterfront, close to the city centre and historical highlights.
ERUS19 will feature the meeting of the Junior ERUS and Young Academic Urologists (YAU), and some European School of Urology (ESU) courses. As we are on the verge of new robotic systems entering the market, the Technology Forum on 11 September promises to be an interesting, informative event that will surely provide a look into the future of robotics.
As the ERUS meeting has historically grown to become the most important live-case robotic urological surgery meeting, the 2019 Lisbon edition aims to live up to this standard. Over 15 live procedures will be performed by the most experienced surgeons on three robotic systems at Hospital Da Luz Lisboa, the largest private hospital in Portugal.
This year’s focus will be on both oncological and non-oncological urological surgeries, since the latter became an important aspect of the urological robotic scene.
We hope to be able to offer a mix of straightforward live as well as more complex cases, such as radical nephrectomy with vena cava thrombosis and complex retroperitoneal lymphadenectomy. Since there is a growing number of salvage prostatectomy after various types of focal therapy, we plan to dedicate a session to this topic as well.
Extra time will be spent on image-guided robotic surgery: Indocyanine green (ICG) and near-infrared fluorescence, 99Tc-PSMA tracing and implementation of three-dimensional model technology for better surgical planning and performance in prostate and kidney surgery. All new technologies in the field will be discussed.
In this year’s edition, focus will be given to the theme “creating consensus in robotic urology”. In working groups, we will aim to reshape the available scientific data on several topics to create a ready-to-use consensus.
The Lisbon edition of the ERUS will also be the first to include the single-port surgery in its programme. In robotic surgery, ERUS has taken a leading role in the development of structured training programmes, the creation of EAU-ERUS host centres and high level training facilities which improved learning curves and surgical outcomes.
Do not forget to submit your work for the ever-growing abstract and poster session. The mixture of high-level scientific lectures with moderated live surgeries have made the ERUS meeting one of the most attractive meetings of its kind.
