The Western Romania city of Timisoara has the first pediatric robotic surgery center in Eastern Europe after a Swiss foundation donated a robot worth almost EUR 2.5 million to the Louis Turcanu Children’s Hospital.

Two teams of two surgeons are currently training to use the robot and they will operate on the first children starting mid-February, reports local Mediafax. They plan to perform 50 robotic surgeries this year, targeting mainly tumors.

Romania’s Health Ministry cut the funding for robotic surgery a few years ago, which means that the hospitals that want to perform such procedures need to find their own funding.

A surgery performed with the new robot at the Children’s Hospital in Timisoara costs some EUR 4,000. The Timisoara University of Medicine has won a USD 3 million project that will help maintain the robot and buy the necessary materials for surgery for the next five years.

The hospital plans to apply for EU funds and to ask the Health Ministry to reopen the robotics surgery program so that it can continue operating this robot after the five-year project ends.

editor@romania-insider.com

(photo source: Spital-copii-timisoara.info)