Mediterranean Pain Forum 2024

Describing grief is a difficult task because of its subjectivity. A more comprehensive definition was first given by IASP – “International Association for the Study of Pain” in 1986, which defined it as: “a sensory and emotionally unpleasant experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described as such.”

Recent estimates have identified that the prevalence of chronic pain in the population reaches 35 percent of the total, providing an empirical but effective measure of the severity on overall health. The concept of pain has evolved over the years, from a reality “reserved” mainly for the terminally ill, it is now considered a “disease within a disease” with characteristics that vary from subject to subject.

The essential characteristic of chronic pain is its persistence after the resolution of the cause: the failure of the cause/effect relationship that characterizes acute and persistent pain.

Therefore, it is necessary to implement training events in this area in order to spread the culture of pain medicine.

This congress is aimed at all those professionals, both medical specialists, such as the anesthesiologist, orthopedic surgeon, neurosurgeon, physiatrist, and not least, the general practitioner, but also nurses, with experience in pain therapy, who wish to strengthen their technical skills or who want to get a good overview of the main topics of interest in pain medicine.

Course participants will have the opportunity to learn the main features of chronic pain and its treatment. The basics will be provided in order to conduct an accurate “assessment” of the patient with chronic pain.

Some topics of frequent interest, such as major minimally invasive interventional treatments and possible complications, will also be discussed.

Medical science is fortunately coming to the rescue in this field, offering ever new drugs and techniques, such as electrical nerve neuromodulation (radiofrequency) or spinal cord neurostimulation.
Just as the treatment of the primary pathology requires the intervention of the specialist, pain in its complexity also requires the intervention of the pain therapy specialist, who must not only know how to correlate it with a correct diagnosis, but also administer appropriate analgesic drugs including opioids, perform minimally invasive interventional treatments, and manage the patient psychologically as well, assisting with therapy and promoting social integration.