IEO Milan reports Italy's first lung tumour treatments by thermal ablation through a robotic bronchoscope

On 29 January 2026, the Istituto Europeo di Oncologia (IEO) in Milan announced that its interventional pulmonology team, led by Dr Juliana Guarize, had performed Italy's first two thermal ablations of lung nodules using the ION robotic bronchoscope. According to the institute, neither patient had complications.

What the procedure involves

The robotic bronchoscope reaches the lung through the airways, without surgical cuts. The ION system's robotic arm can reach nodules just a few millimetres across, including in peripheral parts of the lung that a standard bronchoscope cannot reach. Its images can be combined in real time with cone-beam CT for very precise sampling.

What IEO has now added is a thermal ablation probe fitted to the robotic arm, which destroys small nodules with heat. This means the patient can receive both diagnosis and treatment in the same procedure.

Context

• IEO was the first centre in Italy, and among the first in Europe, to acquire the ION system, at the end of 2024.
• More than 500 diagnostic procedures were carried out with it in the first year.
• The ablation is performed within a clinical protocol, in selected patients, building on experience with the technique in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Dr Guarize explained that robotic bronchoscopy allows a timely tissue diagnosis and, from now on, targeted minimally invasive treatment in selected cases of nodules that cannot otherwise be treated surgically. Prof. Lorenzo Spaggiari, director of IEO's Lung Programme, said the method may be relevant for patients with multiple primary tumours, for previously operated patients who develop a second primary tumour, and for some lung metastases. He expects that, in the medium term, small lung tumours could be treated as day-hospital procedures.

Worth knowing

These are the first cases treated in Italy with this technique, not an established standard treatment. Whether such a procedure is suitable depends on the size and location of the nodule, the diagnosis and each patient's overall health, and the decision rests with the medical team.