Hippocrates’ saying “Relieving pain is a divine art” sums up the view of pain very well. Applying all specialties in medicine requires artistic touches in one aspect. In addition to accurate, complete and up-to-date information in medicine, artistic touches are also needed due to the approach to the patient and the style of handling the disease.
Algologists do their job quietly and improve the quality of life of patients. But “algology” is still not a well-known specialty in society. So who is an algologist, what does he do?
Algology (Pain treatment department) is a science that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all kinds of chronic pain as well as severe pain whose cause cannot be found. Headaches, facial pains – neuralgias, neck pains, shoulder-arm pains, back pains, waist-leg pains, pain due to vascular occlusion, pain of unknown origin and perhaps most importantly cancer pain are treated in this section.
These pains that last more than 3 months and are defined as chronic can be relieved with modern treatment methods. It is of great importance to apply to fully equipped centers and experienced specialists in the permanent solution of these pains, which turn the life of the person upside down if left untreated.
Pain is a personal experience and individual treatment approaches should be applied.
Cancer patients’ living with pain is no longer destiny
The incidence of cancer pain reaches up to 90%, especially in advanced stages. Relieving the pain of cancer patients significantly increases the patient’s quality of life and compliance with cancer treatment.
Cancer pain should really be taken seriously. They should know that cancer patients may experience pain from the moment they have cancer, not only the patient, but also oncology doctors, radiotherapy specialists, surgeons, that is, doctors from all branches dealing with cancer, knowing that the patient may have pain from the moment they have cancer, and they should seek solutions in this regard.
70% is a great success for us in pain treatment, when we achieve more than 50% success, we consider ourselves successful, 50% means that the patient’s pain is reduced by half. There is never 100% success in pain treatment. Pain thresholds vary from person to person, perception of pain changes. For this reason, there is a transition towards “personalized treatment” in pain treatment.
However, despite all these developments, we can say that pain treatment is still insufficient in our country, there are not enough medicines. We are a country that produces morphine and consumes the least amount of morphine. Pharmaceutical companies do not produce morphine because it is very cheap. Other companies also bring expensive materials, and the Ministry of Health does not want to allow this too much.
People can have cancer, but no one should live in pain… Allowing a person to live in pain is considered a crime against humanity. There is a declaration published by the European Pain Society on this subject.
