About the author
Every question on this site was written by one surgeon, and this is who
There is no editorial team behind this and no pool of anonymous contributors. One consultant surgeon writes the questions, resolves every citation, and puts his name on it — which is also why an error can be reported and corrected rather than argued about.
Pablo Lozano Lominchar, MD, PhD, EBPSM · ORCID 0000-0002-5413-8449
Why this matters for an examination, specifically
Knowing the surgery and knowing how a five-option question is built to catch you are two different skills. Knowing how a viva is marked is a third. Most preparation is written by people who have one of them.
He has sat and passed both the Spanish national residency examination (MIR) — which ranks every doctor in the country against every other for a fixed number of posts — and the USMLE, certified by the ECFMG. The USMLE was taken while already practising as a consultant surgical oncologist, fitted around an operating list rather than a study year.
And since 2024, as Associate Professor of Surgery at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, he spends part of every year on the other side of it: writing questions, marking vivas, and watching where able candidates lose marks they did not need to lose. That is the perspective the oral simulator is built from.
The practice behind the material
CRS + HIPEC per year
50–60
Personal experience of more than 350 procedures, within a unit series exceeding 500.
Retroperitoneal sarcoma per year
50
Cumulative experience of more than 500 procedures in sarcoma and complex pelvic surgery.
Indexed publications
36
As author or co-author, plus 24 more through international consortia and national registries.
Practice based at a Spanish national reference centre (CSUR) for peritoneal carcinomatosis and for sarcoma and musculoskeletal tumours. Figures from the curriculum vitae, updated August 2026.
Professional experience
Associate Professor of Surgery
School of Medicine, Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
International Fellow in Surgical Oncology
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. Gastric and Mixed Tumor Service: retroperitoneal sarcoma, desmoid tumours, peritoneal disease and hepatobiliary surgical oncology.
Attending Surgeon — General and Digestive Surgery
Peritoneal, Retroperitoneal and Complex Pelvis Unit. Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, Madrid.
Observerships — transplant and HPB
Western University, London, Ontario; Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago. Grants from the Spanish Association of Surgeons.
Education
PhD in Medicine, cum laude
Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Thesis: intraoperative measurement of hepatic haemodynamics in orthotopic liver transplantation and its relationship with early allograft dysfunction.
Board-certified Specialist in General and Digestive Surgery
Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, Madrid — Spanish residency programme (MIR).
Degree in Medicine and Surgery
Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, Madrid.
Certifications
- European Board of the School of Peritoneal Surface Oncology (EBPSM / ESPSO) — 2024
- Accredited member of the Spanish CSUR national reference network for Sarcoma and Musculoskeletal Tumours — 2025
- Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) certificate
- Occupational English Test (OET) passed
- ATLS (2014) · DSTC — Definitive Surgical Trauma Care (2017) · da Vinci Xi assessment (2023)
How the material is written
Every clinical vignette is written from scratch. No question on this site reproduces, paraphrases or reconstructs an item from any past or current examination paper — which is a deliberate departure from a market where "real recalls" is a selling point.
Every guideline version and every named trial is resolved against PubMed before it is cited, and anything that cannot be resolved is not cited. Single authorship gives the material one consistent clinical voice; it also means it has not been through independent peer review, and where a question turns on a live controversy the answer says so.