February 18, 2026- Medtronic announced that the first U.S. commercial surgical case using its recently FDA-cleared Hugo™ robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) system has been successfully performed by Jihad Kaouk, MD, professor and chair of the Glickman Urologic Institute and the Zegarac-Pollock Endowed Chair in Robotic Surgery at Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Kaouk successfully completed a robotic-assisted prostatectomy, and the patient was discharged the day after surgery.
Urology has led the way in adoption of robotic technology, with about 80% of urologic abdominal surgeries in the U.S. today conducted with the assistance of a robotic system. This high adoption rate has created a community of surgeons highly experienced in robotic-assisted procedures available to support training as new technology like the Hugo RAS system becomes available, which is important as robotic-assisted approaches are increasingly common across many specialties and hospitals are looking for solutions to address capacity challenges.
The Hugo RAS system’s mobile footprint with modular arms may help address operating room scheduling challenges and infrastructure limitations, enabling more patients access to the well-documented benefits of minimally invasive care — including reduced blood loss, shorter hospital stays, decreased recovery time, and less postoperative pain.
Cleveland Clinic actively researches and implements new robotic approaches. Their team, led by Dr. Kaouk as the Principal Investigator, was part of the Expand URO Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) clinical study — the largest ever completed for multi-port robotic-assisted urological surgery in the U.S. Expand URO demonstrated that the Hugo RAS system met primary safety and effectiveness endpoints in urologic surgical procedures, with outcomes that are consistent with published literature.