AOU Federico II pediatric surgery honored in Kagoshima

Artificial intelligence and robotic surgery in the service of precision medicine were the subject of research carried out in collaboration between the Federico II University Pediatric Surgery, the University of Graz (Austria) Pediatric Surgery and the Nanyang Technological University College of Computing and Data Science in Singapore.

The research earned the Frederick II Pediatric Surgery team the "Takeshi Myano" award for best research in the field of technological innovation at the American Society of Pediatric Surgery (IPEG) and Japanese Society of Pediatric Surgery (JASPS) Congress held in Kagoshima in late May 2025. The Pediatric Surgery team, led by Professor Ciro Esposito and composed of Professors Maria Escolino and Mariapina Cerulo, Dr. Vincenzo Coppola, and Drs. Claudia Di Mento and Francesca Carraturo, presented researchresults in Kagoshima entitled: "Artificial Intelligence (AI) guided Pediatric Robotic Surgery" ina panel on technological innovation. "Pediatric surgery," Professor Esposito explained, "is now minimally invasive and highly technological. In addition to laparoscopy, which we use daily in our operating rooms, robotics and artificial intelligence represent the new frontier of Pediatric Surgery. Robotic surgery allows us to perform more precise operations, while AI allows us to reduce complications related to the complexity of the malformative and oncologic diseases we treat."

Simplifying, the AI analyzes thousands of videos of surgeries performed for a given pathology, processes images from CT scans or MRIs along with anatomical data from the patients to be operated on, and the results of these analyses are sent to the robot. The AI then guides the surgeon during the procedure to perform millimeter-accurate surgeries, thus reducing complications, even in cases of severe congenital malformations or cancer patients. The use of these procedures requires operating rooms equipped with state-of-the-art technology. At the Federico II University Hospital, some of the most advanced pediatric surgical rooms existing in Italy are currently operational. For this reason, the Pediatric Surgery of the Federico II University Hospital has been named a European Reference Center for Minimally Invasive and Robotic Surgery in 2019 and a Regional Reference Center for Pediatric Laparoscopy and Robotics in 2021.

The research results have already been published in an American journal, and the work has been made available in open access, meaning it can be downloaded for free by anyone who wants to consult it, to make it accessible to all people interested in this technology.

The benefits of using these technologies are enormous: "In our operating rooms at the Federico II University Hospital, we operate on more than 1,500 children a year, and most procedures are performed using minimally invasive and robotic techniques. "Technological innovation, combined with multidisciplinary collaboration with engineers," Esposito concludes, "marks a step forward in pediatric surgery, offering surgeons cutting-edge tools for complex surgeries and excellent training for the professionals of the future.