Free yourself from pain with a real specialty, fewer molecules and more liberal practice

2023-09-29 12:00:03

Tribune. In France, 14 million people suffer from chronic pain, 70% are dissatisfied with their care and only 3% access one of the 300 chronic pain centers. Eighty million working days are affected by this scourge, with, at the very least, a loss of 1.2 billion euros per year. The observation is dramatic and the bill steep.

The French system – exemplary in the 1990s thanks to its various plans concerning pain – is today running out of steam. Precariousness, sedentary lifestyle, loneliness and senescence – these three “S”s that loom over our Western societies – darken an already worrying picture.

The increasingly “anemic” financial and human resources of this specialty, algology – which is slow to be officially recognized – are one of the most commonly accepted explanations. On the other hand, this pain medicine suffers from insufficient geographical coverage and, above all, hospital-centered coverage. The offer has never been able to develop in the city, due to “unprofitable” pricing, and public hospital structures are saturated, with waiting times that have become indecent. Six months for a first consultation is today the norm, if the structure accepts new patients.

Neuromodulation devices

Finally, with regard to therapy, this management of chronic pain relies, for the general practitioner, on the front line, almost exclusively on medications. This unique response has the merit of being convenient for the practitioner and his patient: speed of prescription for one and absence of involvement for the other. However, the low effectiveness of this chemical analgesia, in particular for neuropathic pain, is increasingly better documented, while the undesirable effects (effects on mood or concentration, incompatibility with driving, misuse, etc.) have serious consequences. undeniable psychosocial repercussions. Opioid drugs illustrate this observation, and the half-million deaths in the United States linked to the opioid crisis alert us to the dangers of an overly pervasive drug culture.

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Solutions exist and arise, point by point, from this observation. Algology must join the other “full-fledged” medical disciplines without further delay in order to be properly taught at the faculty. Less than ten hours, over the course of six years of medical studies, are devoted to pain, the primary reason for consulting a general practitioner. This structure will, finally, allow this discipline to benefit from human and financial resources comparable to those of “official” specialties.

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