A change of gear in headache treatment models to ensure the use of innovative therapies for those who are entitled to them. But to do this, it is necessary to expand the number of competent doctors by expanding the base of specialists with new educational models. This is one of the central themes of the week of Headache, which is celebrated this year from 9 to 15 May.
“The various Scientific Societies that operate in the national field of headaches while covering the national assistance territory – says the president of the Italian Foundation for the Study of Headaches, Paolo Martelletti – present evident difficulties in guaranteeing the capillarity necessary for the assistance coverage of a chronic disease already recognized by law as ‘social’, such as chronic headache “.
According to the expert, “it is evident that the current organizational models of care, focused only on Headache Centers, are now completely inadequate and insufficient. The counter-proof is in the very long waiting lists to access these structures, a phenomenon that produces an automatic progression towards chronicity and a consequential excess of self-medication and abuse of analgesics “, in the face of an offer that the Public Health is able to offer in terms of highly effective migraine prevention therapies with a high safety profile, such as monoclonal antibodies.
The simplification of the methods of accessing innovative treatments is already on the table of the Ministry of Health, but above all specialists are needed. “Improving access to ensure the use of innovative therapies for those who are entitled to them without having a sufficient number of competent doctors – underlines Martelletti – is a closed road that does not solve the problem”. Training on headaches for doctors of any discipline, neurologists, internists, anesthetists, emergency room doctors, gynecologists, and not least general practitioners “who all together every day see patients with migraines in immediate clinical practice – this is the proposal of the president of the Italian Foundation for the Study of Headaches – can represent a valid solution to the access bottlenecks existing in the Headache Centers, which, moreover, in addition to the difficulty of access, present geographical inhomogeneity in terms of numerical presence “.
Training courses already exist. The next one – free of charge – is from 20 to 22 July at the Sapienza University of Rome in hybrid mode, both on-site and remotely open to all doctors of all disciplines (program and free registration at: https://ehf2017.com/ application-form /).
A widespread training necessary, in Italy, as in the world, to cope with an increasingly rampant ‘pain pandemic’. According to a recent review of headache epidemiology data published by Lars Jacob Stovner of the University of Trondheim in Norway, in The Journal of Headache and Pain on April 12, headache affects 52% of the population globally. migraine 14%, tension headache 26% and chronic headache 4.6% and 15.8% of the population has a form of headache every day.