When he first started his medical education in 2004, Dr. Anthony Visioni thought he wanted to be a heart surgeon — until he assisted in a few cardiac surgeries. They weren’t what he was expecting. But what truly captivated him was surgical oncology.
“I had a really amazing mentor named Julian Kim, who was at University Hospitals. … He was doing all sorts of really big, cool cases and taking care of really complex patients, and I started to gravitate toward that,” he says. “I really enjoyed taking care of somebody over a long time. So, a lot of my cancer patients … I’ve known for years, and seeing that aspect of the care through the eyes of my mentor really kind of got me hooked on it.”
Visioni volunteered in the surgical ICU during college at the University of Michigan and attended SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, New York, for medical school. He is now a surgical oncologist at Cleveland Clinic Akron General — a position he’s held for about five years.
“I look at surgical oncology like, I’m an oncologist, and I’m a cancer doctor, and it just so happens that I treat cancers with surgery as opposed to my colleagues in medical oncology who treat cancers with medicines,” Visioni says.
One of Visioni’s recent goals was to bring a newer, minimally invasive aerosol chemotherapy treatment to Akron General. When Mark, a 65-year-old Akron resident, came to him with trouble swallowing, an endoscopy revealed upper gastrointestinal cancer high up in his stomach. Doctors also discovered peritoneal disease — a cancer that affects the abdominal lining. The opportunity arose to deliver aerosol chemotherapy for the first time in Ohio.
“It’s been something that’s been known to people who treat peritoneal disease for a long time, 15 years, but I think the safety data now is good enough, and it’s been around long enough, that we know it’s safe,” Visioni says. “This became a good option to preserve his quality of life.”
Compared to traditional IV chemotherapy, which usually doesn’t produce a strong response in the peritoneum, aerosol chemotherapy delivers treatment directly to the affected area via laparoscopic surgery. This also reduces systemic side effects.
“Giving somebody chemotherapy through the IV comes with all the systemic complications and side effects — nausea, decreasing your … white blood count, all of these things that can happen with various types of chemotherapy — they’re a little bit more mitigated when we deliver it just to the belly,” Visioni says.
As of late March, Mark has been through about three treatments and is doing well, according to Visioni. The former bodybuilder is still working out — eating, drinking and functioning normally. In his last treatment, he showed no signs of progression of the disease.
“You always want to bring your best foot forward,” Visioni says, “because you’re not just treating a disease — you’re treating a friend, a patient … a person that you’ve grown to know.”
Erin Gulling
Erin Gulling
