The work of doctors is as complex as it is invaluable. It is a strenuous profession, which today more than ever requires a high level of specialization and requires improvement year after year . 

But there are also some doctors who are not satisfied and want to take a step further: not only to intervene on the specific pathology, but also to minimize trauma and inconvenience for the patient , with an eye to the quality of life as a whole . .

It happens in Milan, to be precise at the Niguarda hospital , where a group of doctors founded the Operazione Vivere onlus Foundation . 

The non-profit Operation Operation Foundation team

The idea comes from Dr. Giovanni Ferrari , who has been working for twenty-five years at the Niguarda Hospital in Milan, where since 2014 he has been in charge of general and emergency surgery and since 2015 he has been director of general oncological and minimally invasive surgery. 

Dr. Ferrari, who focuses above all on interventions on the digestive system , has contributed to developing minimally invasive methods and putting them into practice personally. 

In recent years he has been working mainly in laparoscopy (i.e. making small incisions in the abdomen, where to insert miniaturized surgical instruments) and with the aid of robotic means . 

Together with his collaborators, Dr. Ferrari had an intuition. Minimally invasive surgery shouldn’t be just a privilege for a few . If there are techniques that reduce stress , trauma and discomfort to a minimum, it is right that the largest possible audience will benefit from them.

Having said that, this team of doctors got to work and, in addition to their activity in the hospital, in 2019 created the non-profit Operazione Vivere Foundation. 

What the Operazione Vivere Onlus Foundation does

The mission of the non-profit organization is precisely to promote minimally invasive cancer surgery, improving the quality of care . To achieve this goal, the non-profit organization works on two fronts .

> Technology : the Foundation raises funds and funding to purchase advanced appliances, machinery and instruments and introduce them into surgical practice.

In fact, we are talking about tested and safe technologies , but often very expensive and constantly updated. If the funds of public hospitals are struggling to keep up, Fondazione Operazione Vivere Onlus tries to fill this void. 

This is because, the site of the non-profit organization puts on paper, with less invasive interventions “a rapid recovery is obtained with the same results in terms of treatment , making the therapeutic process less burdensome”.

> Research : the other strand is that of supporting scientific research in the surgical field. Any innovation in the management of the cancer patient, in fact, passes through a rigorous verification of methods and procedures. 

Among these innovations we can mention the Eras protocol (“Enhanced Recovery After Surgery”) , which helps the patient to recover optimally from the operation, also actively involving his family, to ensure that he returns to his life as soon as possible. normal.