Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, is being treated in the intensive care unit of a Milan hospital for a lung infection related to a kind of leukemia that he has “had for some time,” his personal physician said on Thursday.
A medical bulletin issued by the physician, Dr. Alberto Zangrillo, said Mr. Berlusconi, 86, had chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, which was not acute, and that he was being treated for the lung infection and for the blood cancer. Dr. Fabio Ciceri, head of the hospital’s hematology and bone marrow transplantation unit, co-signed the bulletin.
Mr. Berlusconi had been admitted to San Raffaele hospital on Wednesday, for what Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, a close ally of Mr. Berlusconi and a member of his political party, had described as “a problem related to a previous infection.”
While Mr. Berlusconi has a history of medical problems, the announcement on Thursday was received throughout Italy with the sense of an era coming to a close. Politicians across the political spectrum spoke about how dominating a figure he had been on the national scene for nearly three decades.
Long before he entered politics, Mr. Berlusconi revolutionized Italian society via three privately owned TV channels that brought flashy game shows and day and nighttime American soap operas into Italian living rooms. He lived large, buying his hometown soccer team, AC Milan, in 1986 and propelling it to victory in national and European championships by investing millions.
Even though he was married, he cultivated a man-about-town image. Rumors of sex parties at his villas attracted the attention of prosecutors, who accused him of paying hush money to keep the young women who frequented the parties quiet. He was acquitted of bribery charges in February. But the so-called “bunga bunga” parties tarnished Mr. Berlusconi’s reputation and ended his marriage to Veronica Lario, who publicly rebuked her husband for his involvement with young women.
Buoyed by Mr. Berlusconi’s public notoriety, it took barely a few months for Forza Italia, the party he formally presented in January 1994, to win national elections. The party rode a wave of savvy political branding and voters’ rejection of traditional parties as a result of the so-called Tangentopoli, or “Bribesville,” scandal that toppled the Christian Democrat and Socialist parties that had dominated Italy’s postwar years.
Leukemia experts who have not examined Mr. Berlusconi or the particulars of his case say that his reported diagnosis presents difficulties for a person his age.
The kind of cancer he has, chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, usually occurs in older people. It results from mutations in the bone marrow that cause the marrow to produce too many blood cells. Patients can spend years in a chronic phase but, said Dr. Timony Ley, a leukemia expert at Washington University in St. Louis, “when it progresses to an acute phase it’s really bad.”
When that happens, Dr. Ley added, “outcomes are dismal, especially at this age where therapeutic options are limited because of toxicity.”
The medical bulletin issued by San Raffaele noted that Mr. Berlusconi’s type of cancer was in a “persistent chronic phase” and had not yet turned into “acute leukemia.” The hospital said Mr. Berlusconi was being treated with cytoreductive therapy to reduce his blood cell count.
Throughout the day, family members and close friends visited the hospital, though few spoke to the reporters who converged there when Mr. Berlusconi was first admitted.
Mr. Berlusconi was treated for prostate cancer in 1997, though he did not publicly acknowledge it until three years later in a newspaper interview, saying at the time: “I went through a nightmare lasting months. I am cured. I managed to come out of the tunnel.”
He also had a pacemaker installed in 2006 and had open-heart surgery to replace a faulty heart valve a decade later. In September 2020, he was knocked out by a case of Covid, which he described as an “infernal disease” and “very ugly.”
He spent 10 days at San Raffaele then, returning to the hospital for a considerably longer stay 10 months later because of long-term effects from the coronavirus, according to Italian news reports.
Mr. Berlusconi spent four days at the hospital again last week, for what Italian news outlets reported were routine medical checks. After being discharged, he posted upbeat messages on his Facebook page, including a photo last Sunday showing him smiling outside his home, surrounded by tulips.
Several lawmakers with Forza Italia, Mr. Berlusconi’s party, said he had called them earlier on Thursday, something they took as an encouraging sign.
“I was relieved after the call,” said Paolo Barelli, the Forza Italia leader in the lower house of Parliament.
“His call is a sign of hope,” said the Senate vice president, Maurizio Gasparri. “He was positive, he called others, telling us to be alert, on the game,” Mr. Gasparri said, the ANSA news agency reported.
Mr. Berlusconi, elected three times as prime minister, won a seat again in Parliament in September after spending nearly a decade on the political sidelines after being banned from office following a tax fraud conviction in 2012. But he continued to act as a kingmaker on the national scene.
Leaving the hospital on Thursday afternoon, Fedele Confalonieri, a close friend and the president of Mediaset, a broadcast company founded by Mr. Berlusconi, told reporters that there “is concern, but we’re optimistic.”
Source : Nytimes
