Land first descriptions of surgical interventions on breast tumors they date back thousands of years.
Already in a collection of Egyptian papyri there is talk of cauterized carcinomas and cases “without cure”. For millennia the removal of breast cancer it remained a little more than desperate practice.
But over the centuries, from the classical Greece of Hippocrates and Galen to the Arab scholars, from the Renaissance anatomists to the anesthesia and antimicrobials of the 19th century, knowledge has been accumulated which has resulted, thanks to the extraordinary scientific and technological acceleration of the 20th century, in a true revolution, medical and cultural.
I was lucky enough to see many crucial phases up close: it was my father Umberto who gave a fundamental push towards less invasive surgical techniquesaimed at maximum therapeutic result with minimum damage.
At first we managed to limit radical interventions, then the axillary excavations and today, which this disease is the most widespread among female tumors, we are proving that in many cases you can even avoid touching the lymph nodes.
It is a new step forward in the journey undertaken to minimize the impact of breast cancer on the body and on women’s lives.
Prof. Paolo Veronesi President of Umberto Veronesi Foundation and Director of the Surgical Senology Division of the IEO
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