Beatriz Álvarez

Hoy Rafa Jódar ha jugado contra Jannik Sinner, el número 1 del mundo, en cuartos del Madrid Open. Ha perdido 6-2, 7-6. Tiene 19 años. Y lo que ha pasado en ese segundo set merece ser contado. Jódar tuvo 7 bolas de break. Siete oportunidades de romper el servicio del mejor tenista del mundo. Sinner sacó un winner en cada una. No falló Jódar. Respondió Sinner. Diferencia importante. El tie-break se lo llevó Sinner 7-0. Así acaba un partido contra el número 1 cuando tienes 19 años, llevas 3 meses de profesional y estás jugando en la Caja Mágica con Raúl González mirándote desde la grada. Pero lo que me tiene pegado a esta historia no es el resultado. Es una imagen. La imagen de su padre. Solo. En el banquillo. Sin nadie más. Una fila entera de asientos vacíos a los lados. Mientras otros tenistas viajan con séquitos de entrenadores, preparadores físicos, psicólogos, nutricionistas, mánagers y analistas de datos, Rafa Jódar senior se sienta ahí solo. Él lo entrena. Él lo gestiona. Él planifica las sesiones. Él decide cada paso de la carrera. Y cuando llega a casa, corrige exámenes. Porque es profesor de Educación Física en un instituto de Leganés. Rafa Jódar hijo creció en Arroyo Culebro, un barrio humilde de Leganés. Entre parques y bloques de pisos. Ni academia de élite ni patrocinadores desde niño. Se formó en el Club de Tenis Chamartín y se fue a jugar a la universidad de Virginia. En enero estaba en el puesto 166 del ranking ATP. Hoy es el número 34 del mundo. En tres meses. A 7 puntos de ser cabeza de serie en Roland Garros. Lo que ha hecho en esos tres meses no es normal. Ganó el ATP 250 de Marrakech — el sexto español en ganar un torneo ATP con menos de 20 años, junto a Nadal, Alcaraz, Moyá, Ferrero y Robredo. Semifinales en el ATP 500 de Barcelona. En Madrid eliminó a De Miñaur, número 8 del mundo, y a Joao Fonseca. Si ves vídeos suyos en Australia en enero y lo ves hoy, parece que han pasado 18 meses. No tres. Y todo esto con su padre solo en el banquillo. "Es mi entrenador desde niño, mi mánager. Somos uno. Yo siempre miro al box y solo está él. Y así es muy fácil." El padre es quien le baja los humos. Quien le recuerda cada día que sigue siendo el mismo chaval de Leganés. "Que no me crea nadie que no soy." Cuando Sinner terminó el partido, escribió en la cámara: "What a player." En rueda de prensa dijo: "España siempre ha tenido jugadores increíbles. Ahora tienen uno más." El número 1 del mundo diciendo eso de un chaval de 19 años de Arroyo Culebro al que entrena su padre, un profesor de instituto. Asusta pensar dónde puede llegar cuando se rodee de más profesionales. Pero algo me dice que su padre seguirá ahí. Solo. En esa fila vacía. Siendo lo único que Rafa necesita mirar cuando el partido se complica. Hay historias que merecen ser contadas. Esta es una de ellas. Cuento más así en mi newsletter diaria gratuita 👉 antiburocracia.es/nl-x

👏The Quantitative Methods in Radiation Oncology course has successfully concluded in Lisbon, bringing together participants and experts for several days of in-depth learning and exchange. A sincere thank you to everyone who has been part of this journey! #ESTROSchool26

We should control the narrative for talking about radiotherapy and side effects. We should no longer accept to wear the black hat! We should do something, be pioneers like @DrewMoghanaki!

📣Fantastic news for #kidneycancer patients! #kcsm #radonc 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 @brian_rini @montypal @DrChoueiri @DrDanielHeng @DrYukselUrun @ravikanesvaran @lalaniMD @AlbigesL @crisbergerot @IKCCorg @DrRanaMcKay

"Optimal Health for All, Together." ✨ More than a slogan, it’s ESTRO’s 2030 vision. 🎥 Carmen Rubio Rodríguez, candidate for President-Elect, shares what it means for the future of #RadiationOncology, and why “Together” matters most. 🤝 #ESTROElections

Dra. Carmen Rubio, candidata a la presidencia de @ESTRO_RT : «La #radioterapia debe ocupar un lugar central en las políticas oncológicas europeas» isanidad.com/361544/dra-car…

@KoneruMd @drmikechao Thanks for this thread! 👏🏼 So necessary having all this information!

We have never run a sham-controlled RCT for total knee replacement. Not once. The most commonly performed orthopedic procedure in the United States, 700,000+ per year, has never been tested against placebo. And yet when low-dose radiotherapy (LDRT) for knee OA is presented, the first objection is always: "Where's the sham-controlled data?" That double standard is worth naming out loud. Here is what LDRT actually has: → 2 positive sham controlled trials (Korean and Iranian) → A 292-patient prospective RCT (Russian) with 11 year follow-up → 4.5x difference in pain scores at 36 months across every domain (pain, stiffness, function, quality of life) → Plain-film radiography and MRI at 10 years showing a statistically significant reduction in marked progression → A 50-year European safety record with no meaningful toxicity Here is what the treatments currently in OA guidelines have: → NSAIDs: known cardiovascular, renal, and GI harm at chronic doses → Glucosamine/chondroitin: failed large RCTs. Still in some guidelines. → Corticosteroid injections: emerging evidence of accelerated cartilage loss with repeat use → TKA: no sham trial. Ever. If LDRT was a pill, it would be in every guideline. The evidence bar being applied to LDRT is not being applied to anything else in this space. The critics aren't wrong that we need a multicenter sham-controlled trial. We do. That's the ask. But the argument that the current evidence is insufficient to justify treatment while we continue recommending interventions with weaker or more harmful evidence bases is not scientific rigor. It is asymmetric scrutiny. The field has been waiting decades for a non-surgical, disease-modifying treatment for OA. The data suggests we may have had it all along. That conversation is overdue.

@ESTRO_RT @Mamen_RubioR go go go!!!!

🗳️ ESTRO 2026 Elections: Introducing the Candidates! 🏆 President-Elect: ✅ Hans Langendijk (NL) ✅ Carmen Rubio Rodríguez (ES) 👥 Board (2 positions) ✅ Mirjam Mast (NL) ✅ Rita Simões (UK) ✅ Vratislav Strnad (DE) ✅ Piotr Wojcieszek (PL)

Los aspirantes al MIR piden la dimisión de @Monica_Garcia_g por el caos con el examen Denuncian errores en más de 5.000 expedientes en las listas definitivas, notas infladas en extracomunitarios y no hay tiempo para presentar todos los recursos de alzada larazon.es/sociedad/aspir…

📢 Grandes noticias para los vecinos de Alcobendas. 🏥 Nuestra ciudad contará con un complejo sanitario innovador que integrará, además, una residencia de mayores y un campus universitario. 🚀 Alcobendas avanza con un proyecto de excelencia, innovador y sostenible.

I translated this into English for everyone to read. This is written by an orthopedic surgeon colleague in Spain, but I know my American colleagues will appreciate the text an similarities to challenges we face here 1/ The Asymmetry in Medicine in Spain: Responsibility Without Authority (I) Opinion Francisco J. Guitián Lema The Asymmetry in Medicine in Spain: Responsibility Without Authority (I) “There is irrefutable empirical proof of this asymmetry: the doctor can replace anyone; no one can replace the doctor,” states Francisco J. Guitián Lema, a Vigo-based traumatologist specializing in orthopedic surgery There is a truth so elementary that it feels uncomfortable to state it: a hospital exists solely and exclusively to cure the sick. It is not there to provide jobs or to justify organizational charts. Nor to feed bureaucracies or to experiment with organizational theories. It exists so that a sick human being leaves it less sick or, at the very least, having received the best possible treatment. From this premise follows a logical consequence that the Spanish healthcare system seems determined to ignore: in that healing process, there are only two absolutely indispensable figures. The patient, who is the reason for the entire structure’s existence, and the doctor, who possesses the knowledge to guide that process. Everything else — and this is not disdain, but taxonomy — is support structure. Necessary, valuable, often heroic, but auxiliary. The doctor is the only professional capable of performing the core act that justifies the hospital’s existence: diagnosing the disease and establishing the treatment. Without a diagnosis, there is no possible direction. Without a therapeutic indication, there is no meaningful action. An orderly transports the patient, but it is the doctor who determines where and why. A nurse administers medication, but it is the doctor who decides which, how much, and when. A technician performs a test, but it is the doctor who orders it and interprets its result. This functional hierarchy is not a social convention or an inherited privilege: it is a direct consequence of training. Six years of medical school plus four or five years of MIR specialization produce a professional capable of integrating knowledge of anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, and a thousand other disciplines into a diagnostic synthesis that no other healthcare professional is trained to perform. There is irrefutable empirical proof of this asymmetry: interchangeability. A doctor can, in case of need, perform the functions of any other hospital professional. They can push a stretcher, insert an IV line, draw blood, take vital signs — in Germany, doctors routinely perform these functions. The reverse is not true. An orderly cannot diagnose pneumonia. A nurse cannot order a surgical intervention. The doctor can replace anyone; no one can replace the doctor. Recognizing this reality does not imply disdain toward anyone. Nursing care is essential. The orderly’s work ensures that hospital flow does not stop. Everyone deserves respect and fair compensation. But respect for personal dignity cannot be confused with functional equivalence. In an operating room, the surgeon is not worth more as a human being than the assistant; but their function is irreplaceable in a way that the assistant’s is not. This distinction, obvious in any other field, has become taboo in Spanish healthcare. The prevailing egalitarianism has managed to make an evident functional truth be perceived as a moral offense.

Se puede decir más alto, pero no más claro.

Estuve un tiempo magnífico durante el día antes el simposio SEOR! Yo he visitado la clínica de oncología en Salamanca, he charlado un poco con las residencias, y después disfruta una cenar con el el muy agradable equipo de SEOR! Vaminos! 🇪🇸 #SEOR #radonc

@yuanjamesrao @RadioterapiaMex 21 patients!!!!???? Enough??? 😨

Provocative study of ChemoIO for Omission of RT for stage III NSCLC(!) Evolution phase II study from Japan. In pts with PD-L1 TPS >50%, pembro+chemo induction and pembro maintenance had 2 yr PFS 67%, which arguably is comparable to PACIFIC. Is any local tx needed? #radonc

Huge congratulations to Dr Muhammad Ali - winner of the Elekta Award at #RANZCR2025 for advances in the use of technology in #radiotherapy 🏆 Awarded for his Phase 2 RCT of Neoadj Pembro + #SABR before nephrectomy for #RCC (NAPSTER) @dr_alimuhammad @RANZCRcollege @PeterMacCC

Pasi Janne presents overall survival by prognostic factors in FLAURA-2 trial of Osimertinib + chemo vs osi alone. Nicely summarized in his last slide. #ESMO25 #LCSM

🚨 💥 #ESMO25 FLAURA2 high risk subgroup analysis boosts survival in 1L EGFRm NSCLC high-risk subgroups: ☑️CNS mets (HR 0.75) ☑️L858R (HR 0.79) ☑️plasma EGFRm+ (HR 0.73) ☑️TP53 alt (HR 0.76). mOS longer vs osi alone (often NR) 🤗 mOS was NR in many #LungCancer patients @OncoAlert