Living with pain: a reality suffered by one in four Spaniards

One in four Spaniards suffer from chronic pain. Specifically, and according to data from the latest chronic pain barometer presented last April, 26% of citizens suffer from this disease that conditions their daily lives..

A percentage of people that has been increasing in recent years and whose only hope in many cases is to go to a Pain Unit where, through different techniques and drugs, they can restore the quality of life that was taken from them.

When is pain considered chronic?

For pain to be considered this way, it must appear more than four days a week and last more than three months.. Living all day long with pain that makes you unable to go shopping, work or do household chores is terrible, to which we must add the lack of understanding of a large part of society.

What is the profile of the patients?

The most common profile of the patient with chronic pain is that of a woman between 55 and 75 years old, with a low purchasing power and poor lifestyle habits.. They suffer more than them, specifically the prevalence is 31% compared to 21%.

By location, the most common pain is back pain, generally due to scoliosis or protrusions that cannot be operated on, followed by that caused by osteoarthritis of the knee, hip and shoulder.. In third place would be pain of oncological origin.

But is pain a symptom or a disease?

From Semdor, the Spanish Pain Society, they are clear: “Chronic pain is not a symptom, it is a disease in itself. After three months from the onset of the pain, it becomes a disease because memory circuits are generated that continue to be remembered even if the patient is cured.”

What is a Pain Unit?

It is a hospital unit specialized in pain control in the broad sense of the word, that is, chronic pain but also pain that occurs after surgery, trauma or infection.. In the case of chronic pain, many of them have no cure, but they can be relieved.

How do they treat pain in these units?

In recent years, advances have appeared that allow them to use different techniques to try to relieve patients' pain, and not only the use of powerful drugs..

From the use of radiofrequency devices that act on the affected nerves to spinal stimulation electrodes that seek to cut off the transmission of nerve pain signals before they reach the brain, through the use of regenerative treatments with platelets and stem cells or nerve blocks. .

But the approach to chronic pain in these units is always multidisciplinary, not only using techniques or drugs, but also including physiotherapy or psychological support, among others.

What types of pain do you treat?

Those caused by health problems such as stenosis of the spinal canal, trigeminal neuralgia, fibromyalgia, postherpetic neuralgia, pain of oncological origin, post-surgical pain…. The range is very wide.

Do the drugs you use create addiction?

A patient who arrives at this unit is not prescribed a powerful opioid such as fentanyl as soon as he enters the door; before arriving at him, he is tested with other drugs following the well-known “WHO analgesic ladder.”

Fentanyl would be on the third step of that ladder, and before reaching it we have non-opioid medications such as metamizole or diclofenac and weak opioids such as tramadol.. Even before moving to that third step, drugs from the first two steps are combined.

But it is true that third-tier opioids can create dependence, and for this reason and in order to try to avoid it, these units resort to a drug rotation system.