Course Aim

The recognition that acute and chronic pain have two distinct mechanisms and that chronic pain is a disease in its own right has been a major insight.

More recently WHO have stated that chronic pain is a disabling disease and therefore that physical and rehabilitation medicine has a pivotal role in the management of the chronic pain patient and related disability.

In our daily practice we witness cases in which pain is the generator of disability as well as cases where the disability is becoming unbearable because of the presence of chronic pain.  

The School will assist clinicians to refine their clinical diagnostic approach to identify various phenotypes of pain -nociceptive, neuropathic, Nociplastic-, to improve their ability to interpret clinical, instrumental and laboratory finding and to establish the most appropriate rehabilitation as well as physical and pharmacological treatment to overcome pain and the related disabling condition.

 

The 2024 edition is focused on central pain. Chronic Post Stroke Pain (CPSP) and pain in Spinal Cord Injuries (SCI) are already “per se” a dramatic clinical condition. In clinical practice this situation can be even more disabling as other form of pains i.e nociceptive and nociplastic are overlapping the neuropathic component  making a correct diagnosis and rehabilitation approach not so easy to disentangle. A better understanding of the complexity of pain in stroke and spinal cord injured patients has an important role in providing appropriate and adequate rehabilitation management for these patients.