Biography

Dr. Diego González Rivas has a degree in medicine and surgery from the University of Santiago de Compostela. He completed training in Thoracic Surgery and Lung Transplantation at the University Hospital of La Coruña. After completing a year working at the University Hospital of Santiago, he returned to the University Hospital of La Coruña where he worked as a thoracic surgeon and a member of the lung transplantation program (one of the most important nationwide, with about 50 cases per year) from 1999 to 2015. He was the creator of the Minimally Invasive Thoracic Surgery Unit (UCTMI) who currently works at the Hospital Quirón y San Rafael de la Coruña. He is co-director of the UMICS in Portugal (Operating regularly in the Lusiadas group of Porto and Lisbon, HPA group of Algarve and HIA of Azores) and in Madrid (Nisa Vithas Pardo Aravaca Hospital) . He is a staff surgeon at the Ernst Von Bergmann hospital in Potsdam (Germany) and at Chest Disease Hospital in Kuwait, where he goes regularly 3-4 times a year to perform complex surgeries. He is also the creator and current director of the Uniportal videothoracoscopic surgery program at the Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital, in China (the largest thoracic center in the world with more than 20,000 major lung resections performed per year). He is also an associate professor in 4 other hospitals in China (Mudanjiang, Kunming, Taizhou and Xian) as well as in other countries in Europe, Asia and South America.

Dr Gonzalez Rivas serves on several editorial boards, he is reviewer of many scientific journals and he was the coordinator of the annual meeting of Spanish society of thoracic surgery (SECT) from 2014-2017. He also collaborate with educational activities of European association of cardiothoracic surgery (EACTS), European Society of thoracic surgery (ESTS), International Society of Minimally Invasive Cardiothoracic Surgery (ISMICS), Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) and American Association of Thoracic Surgery (AATS). He is a board European certificated surgeon since 2010 (FECTS) and member of several scientific societies such as the AATS since 2016. He started to perform VATS lobectomies in 2007 after learning the technique at Cedars Sinai with Dr Rob Mckenna. After 100 major resections performed he visited Duke medical center in 2008 to learn the double port technique with Dr Thomas Damico.  Once experience was gained with this technique he evolved to single-port approach in 2009.

He was pioneer surgeon in the world performing uniportal VATS anatomic resections (first case in April 2009 starting with 2 incisions but using only the utility incision and first pure uniportal VATS reported in June 2010), non-intubated uniportal major pulmonary resections (first case in April 2014) and Unisurgeon Uniportal VATS technique (first case in 2016). He is also expert in uniportal subxiphoid resections and pioneer in complex uniportal VATS carinal and bronchovascular sleeve reconstructions. He contributed in the development of the subxiphoid uniportal robotic system (intuitive surgical, Da Vinci) performing the first lobectomies and thymectomies in cadaveric lab in 2018. Pioneer surgeon in the world performing pure robotic uniportal lobectomies using the Xi Da Vinci System (first cases in September 2021, at San Rafael Hospital, Coruña, Spain) He has published more than 100 papers describing these procedures and the results in the most important medical journals and textbooks of thoracic surgery. In addition he was the only surgeon receiving the Top doctors award during 5 consecutive years (2014-2018) and the youngest doctor nominated to the prestigious “Princess of Asturias award” in 2018 where he was finalist.