Every 11th European is suffering from chronic pain

European Pain Congress EFIC: One in eleven Europeans suffers from chronic pain

23/09/2011

Whether back pain, headache or muscle problems: every eleventh European suffers from chronic pain. As physicians and scientists report at the current European Pain Congress EFIC in Hamburg, the permanent pain can even cause changes in the brain. Chronification is also a permanent burden on European societies.

About one in five people in Europe suffers from pain. According to further surveys, even every eleventh European has pains that are chronically manifested every day. Most patients are not treated properly or not at all, as researchers and medical specialists at the European Pain Congress EFIC in Hamburg warned. In order to achieve better health care for those affected, chronic pain should be recognized as a separate disease. Then the way to a specialized training for doctors was paved and patients could inform themselves more adequately, so the hope of the pain experts.

Patients with chronic pain have many times a long ordeal behind them. Many years pass before effective treatments are used. Previously, those affected had numerous visits to doctors with different specialists and were hospitalized several times in hospitals. They have countless therapies such as surgery, injections, massages, baths, nerve blocks or cures behind. The subjective experience, even specialists can not seem to help, many people experience as tormenting. The therapies come and go, but often the pain is preserved.

Economic impact on health systems
Chronic pain should by no means be understood as a single problem of the person concerned. The overall societal and economic effects are questionable, as EFIC President Hans Georg Kress from Vienna put it, at the Pain Congress. Nineteen percent of pain patients with mild to moderate symptoms have already lost their jobs due to their symptoms. 60 percent of the patients had their doctor due to the pain „Consult two to nine times in the last six months“, as the physician emphasized. „When we look at pain patients of working age, studies show that around two-thirds of the total cost of pain is loss of production.“ A number that should also exercise the policy.

Last year, approximately 52 million people in Germany, Spain, the UK, France and Italy suffered regular and recurrent pain. Doctors talk about a chronification of the pain when it persists for at least three to six months or repeatedly after brief interruptions. The most common pain conditions are caused by back pain (63 percent), pain in the joints (48 percent) or pain in the neck area (30 percent). Background diseases such as cancer and rheumatism also cause severe and permanent pain.

If you can afford it, you can take care of it outside the health care system and, for example, go to a chiropractor or osteopath in case of back problems. For most people, however, there is a massive shortage, as Dr. med. Kress explained. It was „Terrifying that a large part of this suffering and these costs would be unnecessary and caused by massive under-treatment“. Despite numerous medical and therapeutic advances in recent years, 70 percent of European patients would not even have been prescribed a standard standard of care. Many suffer the pain until they become incapacitated. In addition, unending pain causes mental suffering, such as depression, and increasingly limits the quality of life of patients.

Older people are underserved
On a large scale, older people in particular are affected by ineffective treatments. The specialized requirements of the treatment of the elderly are often not sufficiently considered by the attending physicians. This condition is particularly alarming because the ongoing demographic change is making society older. This inevitably increases patient numbers. In light of the changes, scientists are demanding more research funding for the development of new prevention concepts and therapies. Elderly patients over 70 or 75 are excluded from most drug trials. There is little evidence of interactions with other medications that older people have to take for other conditions. The Dutch doctor Kris Vissers criticized, „Doctors are therefore left in the dark about interactions of the active ingredients and their consequences“. The patients then have the chance of being overlooked.

Doctors often do not take pain from men seriously enough
Pain therapy is subject to numerous prejudices. Not every pain is the same and can be lived out anytime, anywhere. Patients in the workplace often complain less about pain than their spouses or friends and men, for example, deal differently with complaints than women. Recent studies have shown that this can have fatal consequences for the quality of treatment. Because doctors also rate pain of women and men differently. „Studies show that opinions about pain in women and men are assessed differently by physicians. In men, pain is often underestimated in intensity“, warns the German expert and doctor Christiane Hermann. Emotional and psychological factors can be considered in the prevention of chronic pain, as Professor Martin Koltzenburg of Great Britain emphasized. Optimism can activate the resistance and relieve pain.

Pain experience is shaped by parents
Pain is already shaped by the behavior of the parents. Therefore, of course, pain also has an emotional component, as Hermann said. „It can be observed that toddlers, when they fall, often look first at their parents and try to read from their countenances how bad that is.“ If parents show a naked horror or a worrisome face, the children start to cry. On the other hand, it has been shown that a social network of emotional attention to patients pain relief. Therefore, according to the researchers' advice, parents should act in their actions balanced on children's pain experiences. Pain is a serious matter, but it should not be trivialized or dramatized. A constructive response could be, for example: „What can help you to make you feel better again??“

Chronic pain causes changes in the human brain, according to a chronic pain survey in Europe. Often, the original cause of pain is independent of the subsequent pain, as Kris Vissers from Nijmegen reported. Such brain changes affect the entire organism. Chronic pain can thus not only be regarded as a symptom of the preceding disease. (Sb)

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