World Day of Pain 2022

The World Day of Pain is celebrated every October 17. An event promoted by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and the World Health Organization (WHO), and whose main objective is to improve the quality of life of people suffering from pain, as well as to improve knowledge and raise awareness of this issue.

According to data provided by the Spanish Pain Society in the presentation of its 2021 annual congress, it is estimated that more than 7 million people in Spain (approximately 17% of the population) have been affected by pain, and over 11% suffer from chronic pain, causing an economic impact of 16,000 million annually.

 

Translating pain knowledge into clinical practice.

The theme of this year’s edition is “Translating pain knowledge into clinical practice”, and refers to the importance of translating pain research into clinical practice. Often, the time it takes from the time some kind of discovery is made until it reaches routine practice is too long.

In order to improve in this aspect, and to reduce the time that passes from the time a discovery becomes available until it is translated into actions that benefit patients, the IASP and other member societies, such as the SED, put forward a series of proposals:

• Identify barriers and propose solutions to improve the predictive capacity of preclinical research.
• Provide updates on what has been learned from some studies on common and rare genetic pain variants.
• Provide updates on in-depth patient phenotyping, and how this is implemented for stratification of patients for trials or targeted therapies.
• Improve communication between all stakeholders involved: patients, physicians and researchers.
• To highlight the importance of reducing the gap in pain knowledge translation between rich and poor countries.
• Provide updates on new practices to improve the design of clinical studies.
• Update the use of new approaches and ideas on physical and psychological aspects of pain.

From Instituto Aliaga we join the proposals made by the IASP and the other societies that make up the IASP on this World Day, to promote information and improve knowledge about pain, and implement the initiatives described and provide better care and better quality of life for patients.