A hospital in Andalucia has successfully carried out its first robot-assisted kidney transplants from living donors, marking a major advance in transplant surgery in southern Spain.
Cordoba’s Reina Sofia University Hospital is now the second hospital in Andalucia, after Cadiz’s Puerta del Mar Hospital, to introduce robotic technology for kidney transplant implantation.
The first two patients to benefit were a teenage boy from Cordoba, who received a kidney donated by his father, and an adult from Jaen, whose sister donated her kidney.
Both operations took place in early June, and doctors say the patients are recovering well.
The donor kidneys were removed using laparoscopic surgery before being implanted with the assistance of a robotic surgical system.
Hospital director Francisco Trivino said the milestone represents ‘another step forward in our strategy of surgical innovation’, allowing surgeons to perform increasingly precise and minimally invasive procedures while maintaining high standards of safety.
Although traditional open surgery remains the standard approach for kidney transplants, specialists say robotic-assisted surgery offers comparable clinical results while providing several benefits for patients.
These include less post-operative pain, reduced blood loss, fewer wound complications, faster recovery times and improved cosmetic results.
Doctors hope to expand the technique in the future to include kidney transplants from deceased donors and more complex transplant procedures.
Living donor kidney transplants are considered the best treatment option for many patients with kidney failure because they can significantly reduce time spent on dialysis and improve long-term quality of life.
Reina Sofia Hospital carried out eight living donor kidney transplants in 2025 and has performed 35 over the past five years.
The hospital has become one of Spain’s leading centres for robotic surgery since installing its first Da Vinci surgical system in 2018.
A second robot was added in 2021, and surgeons have now completed more than 3,000 robot-assisted operations across specialties including urology, general surgery, gynaecology, thoracic surgery, ENT and paediatric surgery.
Read more Andalucia news at the Spanish Eye.
