In Memoriam – Prof. Luca Aldrighetti (1963-2025)
On behalf of the Council of the European-African Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association (E-AHPBA), we pay tribute to Prof. Luca Antonio Aldrighetti who passed away on May 23. Our thoughts are with his wife Renata, his son Alessandro, his mother Adriana and all his family, friends, and his colleagues of the San Raffaele hospital in Milan.
Luca was a visionary and an innovator. He saw beyond. In the era of pioneers – when minimally invasive liver surgery looked like a technicality for some – he perceived its strengths and benefits. He worked passionately on the technique and outcomes before currently available technology were implemented on a large scale. First in laparoscopic, and thereafter in robot-assisted liver surgery. He also understood early that the greatest push for a homogeneous progress is the creation of a community.
In 2014, before international guidelines strongly indicated this need, he established the Italian national registry of minimally invasive liver surgery (I Go MILS). The mission of this pioneering initiative exceeded the collection of data, aiming to the creation of a network so that the cross-cutting innovation was made accessible not only to the pioneers of liver surgery, but to all HPB surgeons regardless of the volume of their activity. For growth, for safety, for improvement. I Go MILS became a container of initiatives, within which the Italian school of minimally invasive surgery was born, but also bonds of friendship, trust, and proctorship were created. If the current snapshot of Italian liver surgery is appreciated internationally, we certainly owe a lot to him. But his merits extent far beyond minimally invasive liver surgery. All together, was involved in over 600 publications resulting in an H-factor of 74 and over 21,900 citations.
He used to repeat: “remember where you come from” and strongly believed in the idea of mentorship. He thought of his group as a single entity in which everyone could develop their potential and characteristics to the best of their ability. He aimed to grow 360-degrees surgeon scientists. And indeed, he never forgot where he came from: from the clinical activity, from the bedside. His technique and his research were focused on the well-being and improvement of clinical and oncological outcomes, targeting one single endpoint: the patient. His last effort – which now appears as a legacy – are the world guidelines for the management of patients with perihilar cholangiocarcinoma, where the multidisciplinary team included not only surgeons, oncologists and radiologists, but also patient representatives and ethicists.
His strong commitment was aimed at the search for improvement and optimization, requesting the maximum effort to himself as first. He never spared himself in the workplace, he never wanted to show a moment of weakness. And this epilogue also teaches us something: the search for the best cannot ignore balance and showing one’s own fragility.
We will miss you Luca, but your group – solid and compact – will carry on your legacy and your clinical, scientific and human teaching. They will not forget where they come from and neither should all of us! As greater E-AHPBA community let us aim to carry forward his legacy of innovation and collaboration, not only in minimally invasive liver surgery but for all HPB surgery.
Dear E-AHBPA members, we have lost a legend of liver surgery but more importantly someome who showed us the importance of continuous innovation and collaboration in HPB surgery.
On behalf of the E-AHPBA Council,
Marc Besselink, President E-AHPBA
Francesca Ratti, San Raffaele Milan
