Alberto Portilla MD, PhD

Dr. Alberto Gomez Portilla (Valencia, 1956) is the pioneer in the application of HIPEC against carcinomatosis in Spain. And he was also the creator, with the support of Dr. Salvador Lledó, of the first Carcinomatosis Unit in Spain. Around 300 patients have passed through his hands, which could have been many more if it were not for the fact that in the community where he practices, the Basque Country, there is no reference hospital for this practice, as there are in others, such as Catalonia.

He studied medicine at the university in his hometown between 1973 and 1979. He opted for surgery due to his ability to solve problems and his interest in iatrogenic, the secondary effect of medical or surgical acts. He did his residency at the Clínica Universitaria de Navarra and, in 1986, obtained his doctorate from the University of Navarra with a thesis on the action of surgery in the development of operated stomach cancer. Already as a resident, he was able to carry out stays outside of Spain, in the Birmingham hospital, related to pancreas transplantation. After a tour of various hospitals and stays in Genoa, Johns Hopkins, and Washington, he imported techniques and routines into Spain hitherto unheard of in the country, and in 1998 he became head of the Hospital Santiago Apóstol de Vitoria.

In 1993 he enters "in convulsion", as he himself says, with the writings of Paul Sugarbaker. In 2005, he convened the first meeting of the Spanish Carcinomatosis Group in Vitoria and managed to gather knowledge and teams that had been dispersed until then. He believes that achieving the general implementation of the Sugarbaker technique would require the involvement of medical oncologists and helping the patient from all points of view.

He has devoted part of his research effort to elderly patients, who have traditionally been relegated to cancer treatment and who have not yet entered the carcinomatosis protocol. And in June 2019, he received a tribute from all his professional colleagues, cancer surgery, in the form of the SEOQ Doctor Alfredo Die Medal, which recognizes exceptional merits in cancer surgery.