This year’s winner of the recently-instituted Endourology Section Lifetime Achievement Award is Prof. José Gabriel Valdivia Uría, the surgeon who developed a technique of percutaneous renal access with the patient in supine position in 1988. The Valdivia technique, in various forms is still used to this day.
Prof. Traxer: “In the 90s Prof. Valdivia designed a new way to do PCNL, what we now call the supine position. Unfortunately at that time the approach did not catch on. In the early 2000s, Prof. Roberto Scarpa and a young Prof. Cesare Scoffone and their team in Turin recognised Valdivia’s work as very promising and managed to combine this technique with new technology. They developed the combined surgery ECIRS (Endoscopic Combined IntraRenal Surgery). In the last 15-20 years it has become a gold standard technique, based on Valdivia’s technique.”
“Prof. Valdivia’s innovation was patient positioning, and the newly developing technology (flexible ureteroscopy) in this position gave the possibility to do combined surgery from below and from above. This special position made it feasible and safe to perform PCNL. We felt that with our meeting being held in Spain, it was a good time to honor Prof. Valdivia.”
Dr. Oriol Angerri (Barcelona, ES) introduced Prof. Valdivia, paying tribute to “a true pioneer, whose idea to change the position improve the quality of life and outcomes for PCNL patients.”
Prof. Valdivia gave a short overview of the initial research that was conducted in the 1980s. He thanked his colleagues anatomists, radiologists who helped develop the technique, in particular “dear friends” Dr. Gaspar Ibarluccea who modified the patient leg positioning, Dr. Pieter Daels who popularized the technique throughout Latin America and Prof. Scofonne for integrating the technique as part of the now established ECIRS.
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