Health: Montano (Simi), ‘internal medicine mother of all specialties’

“Internal medicine is the mother of all specialties, from internal medicine all the other branches of medicine gradually sprouted. This meant that internal medicine lost some of its driving force around the 1970s to the advantage of specialties. At the time the population was young and emerging from the war, the pathologies were “single pathologies” and therefore the specialist had an easy game. Today that is no longer the case.” This was stated by Nicola Montano, internist at the Milan Polyclinic and president-elect of the Italian Society of Internal Medicine (Simi). “Now the population has changed a lot: those who were 40 at the time are now 80-90. We are talking about people with multiple pathologies for which a single specialist is no longer enough but an internist doctor is needed who is in fact an orchestra conductor because it is the doctor who starts the treatment process and then closes it”. Montano has no doubts: “Internal medicine deals with the patient as a whole, makes diagnoses, takes charge of about 70% of patients who are hospitalized for multiple pathologies. Therefore the internist must have an overview of all the diseases and must also try to coordinate the action of the various specialists with respect to the various pathologies that the patient presents”. As for Simi’s objectives, “we work on three fronts – concludes the expert -: research, training of young internists without forgetting the part linked to the profession of internal medicine, or to all those problems that have to do with the performance of our activities within the health system”.