Vialli, the surgeon who operated on him speaks: “Very aggressive tumor”

Lorenzo Franculli

06 January

He is the surgeon who operated on him for the first time in Italy, when Gianluca Vialli discovered he had an “uninvited guest”, as he calls it, in his body. It was 2017 when Professor Alessandro Zerbi, head of the pancreatic surgery unit at Humanitas in Milan, removed the pancreatic tumor from the former champion of Sampdoria, Juve and Chelsea. “It was a technically successful operation,” the doctor told Gazzetta Active. But since then Vialli’s battle has never ended.

Professor Zerbi, how did you meet Vialli?

“Gianluca already knew Humanitas, we met when he turned to me for further information on some symptoms: in particular, he had become jaundiced, which is one of the early symptoms of this tumor”.

How had he taken the news of the illness?

“With great courage and lucidity. He also recounted this challenge in a book, which he sent me”.

You operated on it in 2017: did the surgery go well? Why did the cancer come back?

“The surgery had gone technically well, so much so that Vialli returned home after a few days also thanks to his trained physique. Post-operative care was performed in London, where he lived. Unfortunately, it was a particularly aggressive neoplasm and, like all cancers, it could come back.”

Statistics say that only 8% of patients with pancreatic cancer are alive five years after diagnosis. For other tumors, such as breast or prostate for example, the estimates are around 90%. Why this difference?

“The tumor is biologically more aggressive than others, furthermore its anatomical location deep in the abdomen and the fact that it does not have a capsule means that pancreatic cancer cells can spread early in the body. Add to this the difficulty of diagnosis , which most of the time is late in the absence of early symptoms. Scientific research is moving forward to improve the prognosis of the disease and the diagnosis and, in recent years, we have been recording tangible progress”.

Is there anything that can be done to prevent this cancer? Who is most at risk?

“Smoking, sedentary lifestyle, obesity are risk factors for this and for all cancers, as AIOM and Airtum recall in the latest report on cancer in Italy. In other cases, genetic and hereditary factors come into play for pancreatic cancer” .