Silvio Berlusconi has leukaemia, according to a medical bulletin issued by his personal physician Alberto Zangrillo today.
Zangrillo said Berlusconi had been suffering from this for some time. The goal of his therapy is to limit the effects of the leukaemia. Zangrillo is head of anaesthesia and intensive care at Milan’s top San Raffaele Hospital where Berlusconi is being treated.
“President Silvio Berlusconi is currently in intensive care to treat a lung infection. The infectious event is framed in the context of a chronic blood condition of which he has been a bearer for some time,” said the bulletin, signed by Zangrillo and by bone marrow transplant chief surgeon Fabio Ciceri.
“The ongoing therapeutic strategy foresees the treatment of the lung infection, a specialised cyto-reductive treatment aimed at limiting the negative effects of the patholological hyperleucocitis and the restoration of his pre-existing clinical conditions”.
Not the most severe form of leukaemia
The leukaemia or blood cancer Silvio Berlusconi is suffering from is not the most severe type. The ex-PM was revealed to have been suffering for some time from chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia.
Berlusconi was admitted to hospital for a lung infection and reported heart problems, on Wednesday.
This form of leukaemia is not the most life-threatening and in its chronic form permits a good quality of life. It is typically treated with ‘DNA’ chemotherapy.
Berlusconi, 86, is alert and actively following his treatment with biological drugs, hospital sources said.
Berlusconi’s family visit him in hospital
Silvio Berlusconi is getting the best possible treatment for his lung infection and chronic leukaemia, his brother Paolo told reporters. He said the family was therefore “confident” the 86-year-old media billionaire would recover for his latest bout of ill health.
“We have the awareness he is being treated in the best possible way and so we are confident. And then there’s the medical bulletin which has been issued and explains all the situation, so we are confident,” said Paolo.
“We are really aware that he is being treated in the best possible way. And that gives us a guarantee that he is being treated very well and we are confident that this time my brother will come out of it stronger than before”. Berlusconi’s eldest son Pier Silvio said his father is a “lion” fighting against the pneumonia and leukaemia after visiting the 86-year-old media today.
