Italy's former center-left leader undergoes "successful" brain surgery

Italy's former center-left head Pier Luigi Bersani has undergone a brain surgery that was "technically successful" after he suffered a surface brain hemorrhage, doctors at a hospital in Parma said on Monday.

The operation, which lasted around three hours, went fine.

"All vital parameters are stable and normal at present and there are not neurological deficits," according to a bulletin released after the surgery.

Bersani awoke and talked with his family, the bulletin added.

Only the next 48-72 hours will tell whether or not Bersani is definitely out of the woods, Ermanno Giombelli, the head doctor who operated him, said.

The 62-year-old veteran of party politics suffered a hemorrhage defined as "subarachnoid" in a surface region of the brain included between the meninges.

The surgery managed to close a cerebral aneurysm that could be a congenital malformation, Giombelli explained.

Bersani had been rushed to a hospital in Parma, a city in northern Italy, on Sunday, after he was hit by a malaise and bouts of vomiting. The brain problem was found after a first examination.

Italy's Prime Minister Enrico Letta as well as representatives from the whole political landscape expressed their concern for Bersani's health conditions.

"A big hug to Pier Luigi Bersani," Matteo Renzi, the 38-year-old charismatic mayor of Florence who defeated Bersani in the center-left Democratic Party (PD) primary in December 2012 to become the party's secretary, wrote on Twitter.

Vice Prime Minister and Interior Minister Angelino Alfano, the leader of the New Center-Right party which split from former premier Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PdL), said he was "affectionately close" to Bersani.

Bersani began his career with Italy's Communist party and was former minister of Industry, Commerce, Transport and Economic Development.

From 2009 to 2013, Bersani was the leader of PD, Italy's leading center-left party which presently shares power in government with the New Center-Right party.

Last year, however, was not an easy one for the center-left politician.

Bersani led his party into the elections in February 2013 but his coalition was unable to secure outright victory in both houses of parliament. Some two months after the voting, he announced he was resigning after failing to form a government.

A practising Catholic, Bersani was the son of a petrol station mechanic near Piacenza. He is married to a chemist from his home town and the couple has two daughters.