Angels on the move

Her name is Gaya Spolverato, and most people won't know her name. But she is one of those who are keeping the shaky national health system afloat. Not the only one, but one of the most significant, for what she does and how she does it: smiling. Journalists looking for controversy ask her about the health disaster, she replies: I have faith.

The youngest head of surgery in Italy operates in Padua. Oncological surgery. Especially gastrointestinal tumors, even rare ones. Often inoperable. Vast, devastating, complicated. Challenges bordering on the impossible. This young woman - forty years old - has already successfully performed over three thousand operations. Patients come from all over Italy, they want her. "I also deal with borderline cases, I try to find a possibility for those with advanced diseases. Challenges don't scare me," she told Corriere della Sera. Who calls her the “record surgeon”.

She admits: in the operating room there is always fear, and woe betide if it were not so. A realistic woman, but positive, concrete and focused. Never a polemic. Of course, the sick health system, the queues, the emergency rooms exhausted, the health workers insulted and beaten by exasperated people (the memory of the “Covid angels” of just five years ago has faded).

But Gaya Spolverato has lives to save: «My characteristic is to face borderline cases without ever giving up. I have the ability to perform complex gastrointestinal interventions, even on very advanced tumors considered inoperable. I am in a national group that deals with the pelvis and patients come to us from all over Italy, defined as hopeless. With my team, very united and excellent, I continually face impossible cases. Giving a chance to those who seem hopeless, prolonging a life, these are my goals".

To become what she is today, she spent a long time abroad. Not as a brain drain, though. She came back, because - she says - "I wanted to bring change to Padua, to my city. I gave myself ten years to succeed in doing so. I will stay in Italy as long as I continue to bring change, even if I have various job offers from abroad".

Outside the operating room she teaches, participates in conferences, writes for specialized magazines, leads an association of women doctors, is married to an architect and has two children. "It's a life of sacrifice", she admits, and smiles. Perhaps some doctors really are angels on the move on earth.


Renzo Agasso
NP March 2025