Tumors, 40 thousand thyroid surgeries a year. Bellantone: “Now you can save at 50%”

Every year in Italy “about 40 thousand thyroid surgeries are performed. Today, one of the innovations we can offer is that of the organ conserving operation in case of cancer, managing to save half of the thyroid. This is a new philosophy of surgery which, in selected cases, allows the patient not to have to take a pill for life and to have greater control of the metabolism. A possibility that we offer more and more also to Gemini “. Rocco Bellantone, dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, director of the complex operating unit of endocrine and metabolic surgery of the Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, underlines this to Adnkronos Salute, recently returned from the congress of the Italian Society of surgery which took place in Catania. “In 10 years, robotic surgery will be the most used, together with the latest generation laparoscopy – highlights Bellantone -. These are innovations that are gaining more and more space and the only brake is only costs, but undoubtedly they guarantee greater safety”. A technological leap which, however, must also be accompanied by university training. “The robot allows even better training than the surgeon – he observes – because these machines have a double console that can be used as a guide by those who are learning, then the vision that the specialist has of the site where he intervenes has no equal. So we can say that it is also easier for young doctors to learn how to operate “. On the recovery of the interventions skipped due to the pandemic, Bellantone explains that “we are recovering, but with great difficulty because in any case, even if the situation is improving, there is a lot of fear of Covid in those who have to attend hospitals for screening and treatment. Inevitably this is the case. it has an effect – he concludes – and even the measures that we must adopt in hospital still penalize the return to normality “.