Dr. Diego González Rivas is one of Spain’s most prestigious and internationally renowned physicians. A Spanish thoracic surgeon, he is globally recognized for revolutionizing lung surgery through minimally invasive techniques and for his extraordinary medical work in dozens of countries. Born in A Coruña (Spain), he has become one of the world’s most influential doctors in the treatment of lung cancer and other thoracic diseases, as well as a global reference in medical innovation, clinical leadership, and humanitarian medicine.
He is the author of “Curando el mundo. Diario de un cirujano nómada” (Healing the World: Diary of a Nomadic Surgeon), in which he recounts his medical and human experiences across the globe.
Dr. Gonzalez Rivas earned his medical degree from the University of Santiago de Compostela and completed his specialization in Thoracic Surgery and Lung Transplantation at the University Hospital of A Coruña, where he developed much of his early career. For several years he was part of the hospital’s lung transplant program—one of the most important in Spain—before beginning an international career that would lead him to operate and train surgeons in hospitals around the world.
After further training in video-assisted surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and at Duke Medical Center in North Carolina, his name became definitively associated with medical innovation in 2010, when he performed the world’s first major lung resection through a single incision, developing the Uniportal VATS (Video-Assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery) technique.
This procedure made it possible to operate on the lung without opening the chest, through an incision of only a few centimeters, significantly reducing postoperative pain, complications, and patient recovery time.
He is a global pioneer of this technique, which represents a true revolution in modern thoracic surgery and is now practiced in hundreds of hospitals worldwide.
From that moment on, Dr. Diego González Rivas began an intense international effort to train surgeons and promote the adoption of uniportal surgery. His professional activity has taken him to operate in more than 130–140 countries, an unprecedented figure in the history of surgery, with more than 10,000 procedures performed across different continents.
In addition to his clinical work, he collaborates with hospitals across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and has led minimally invasive thoracic surgery programs in leading centers, particularly in China, where he develops advanced robotic surgery projects.
At the same time, he has pushed the evolution of uniportal surgery toward new technological frontiers, including single-port robotic surgery and procedures performed without intubation or general anesthesia, further reducing surgical invasiveness. His approach combines cutting-edge technology with a deeply humanistic medical philosophy, based on closeness to the patient and the conviction that empathy and communication are essential parts of the therapeutic process.
Awarded an Honorary Doctorate (Doctor Honoris Causa) by the Miguel Hernández University of Elche, he currently practices as a thoracic surgeon at Hospital San Rafael and Quirón in A Coruña, at Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital in China, and at the Memorial Oncological Hospital in Bucharest.
