Berlusconi at the San Raffaele, Zangrillo: “He responds well to therapies. Neither pessimism nor optimism”

“He is a person who has accustomed us to always responding in the best possible way and therefore even in the face of a serious pathology, in a truly difficult situation, he is responding well to therapy”. On the fourth day of hospitalization of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, his trusted doctor, the head physician of San Raffaele in Milan Alberto Zangrillo, calls for caution, because “all those that are leaps forward or backward, therefore pessimism or optimism, do not meet the criteria of objectivity to which a serious doctor is called”.

The leader of Forza Italia has been hospitalized in the San Raffaele hospital in Milan since Wednesday 5 April, with severe pneumonia: the disease was caused by an immune disorder due to chronic leukemia from which the former prime minister has been suffering for almost two years. Hence, hospitalization in intensive care, where Berlusconi has been undergoing massive antibiotic therapy for four days to resolve the lung infection, and chemotherapy to try to lower the level of white blood cells.

“It is evident that I am serene primarily because we are doing our best. And I am serene because I am dealing with a patient who, I cannot deny it, is also a great friend to me and therefore there is also great personal involvement, but who he’s also used to always responding at his best”, explains Zangrillo at the time. Who adds: “It is clear that we are talking about a patient who is of an age that you all know, with a pathology and a complication that have been defined in a precise way. This leads to targeted therapies, which follow the lines guide, which must always be shared in medicine, therefore therapies aimed at achieving a goal. Our goal is to be able to achieve the resolution of the clinical pathological picture”.

The reference is to pneumonia which would have led to both respiratory and cardiac problems, due to which Berlusconi arrived at the San Raffaele in the late morning accompanied by his partner Marta Fascina: initially a paid room had been set up for the former prime minister in sector Q of the hospital. However, given the particularly serious conditions in which he arrived at the hospital, it was decided to admit him to the cardio-surgical intensive care unit (the ward directed by Professor Zangrillo), in an isolated room, in order to protect him from any infection given the severe immunosuppression of the patient. “Lung infection is the complication of a pathological clinical picture of another nature that we are treating in the best way, trying, as for all our patients, not to leave anything to chance”, says Zangrillo.

In short, the invitation is to be cautious: the situation remains delicate, “I absolutely do not want to go into any predictions because it would not be serious”, reiterates the head physician of via Olgettina. Who, however, also attacks those who, in recent days, have hypothesized that the Knight, if he manages to overcome yet another health crisis, will still not be able to return to political life given his health conditions: “Enough imprudent theses from those who don’t know” .