Paola Perego and the diagnosis of kidney cancer thanks to a routine check-up
The presenter talks in an interview about kidney cancer for which she recently underwent surgery
Paola Perego tells how she was diagnosed with kidney cancer, for which she underwent surgery.
“Every year I do blood tests and an abdominal ultrasound. From one of these ultrasounds the doctor realized that there was something wrong with the kidney. We immediately investigated further with a total body CT scan and the diagnosis was carcinoma. In short, I had cancer,” explains the presenter, 58 years old, in an interview with Ok Salute.
Paola Perego also tells how she faced the diagnosis: “At first I reacted immediately and I was almost not afraid. They operated on me shortly after.” The presenter had announced on social media that she had undergone a partial nephrectomy for a tumor: “I underwent a partial nephrectomy, thanks to the fact that I have checks every year and the mass was not extensive: the year before there was nothing. The oncologist reassured me about the high probability of complete recovery, so it was decided for a conservative surgery which tends to guarantee the functionality of the kidneys. They only removed the part affected by the cancer, saving the healthy part, which thus continues to work normally Fortunately, the treatment of kidney cancer, at least in my case, was resolved exclusively with surgery and I did not have to undergo other invasive treatments, such as radio or chemotherapy.”
Paola Perego believes it is important to raise awareness about prevention: “I am a lucky woman because I have the possibility of having checks done privately and with a simple abdominal ultrasound I was able to discover that I had a kidney tumor at the beginning of its evolution and therefore promptly undergo the right treatment, which in my case was surgery. Unfortunately for many people, this is not the case.”
“I have always undergone screening tests since I was a girl because I had some difficulties with my health right from the start. It has become a habit and should be a habit for everyone. A bit like what happens with tests like mammography for breast cancer, or the search for occult blood in the stool for colorectal cancer, which are offered free of charge by the various Italian regions, with certain deadlines. It is useful that abdominal ultrasound is also part of public health screening. We always think about the cost of a single test, but we don’t calculate how much we could save in treatments, surgeries, and hospitalizations if the various pathologies, especially oncological ones, were identified in time,” adds the presenter, who had spoken for the first time to Verissimo of the disease.
In a video below, Paola Perego’s interview with Verissimo.