Prof.Adriana Ceci, president of Fondazione Gianni Benzi has been invited to participate in the working group of the project «Spegni il dolore – La rete delle lampade», promoted by the non-profit Maruzza Lefebvre D’Ovidio Foundation.
«The aim of the project is to promote the use of paediatric palliative care and pain therapy.- explains prof. Ceci, paediatrician and president of the Gianni Benzi Foundation -To date, many prejudices concerning the use of drugs for pain treatment in paediatric patients still exist. A preliminary survey carried out in numerous Italian paediatric units reveals that 40% of patients suffer from pain, of which 11,3% because of oncologic diseases, rare and genetic conditions affecting muscles, bones or central nervous system. The majority of patients (88,7%) suffers from pain caused by more common, but no less important, conditions: minor surgical procedures, orthopaedic problems, appendectomy, gastroenteritis or chronic diseases of different origins».
The law 38, entered into force on the 15th of May 2010, in Italy, has extended the access to pain therapy to paediatric patients, but this has not caused an increased attention to the problem. In particular, only 41,9% of intervieews declares to have registered an increase in the procedure of pain measuring in their unit.
In fact, despite the law 38, only in less than 60% of cases, the pain is recorded on medical records.
«Our goal is to bring as many Italian paediatric units as possible to respect the minimum standards for the detection of pain and, therefore, the application of therapy. The prof. Benini (University of Padua), responsible of the project at national level, has stated that to reach the goal it will be sufficient to provide each paediatric units with suitable medical records and with an easy-to-use instrument, thealgesimeter. In units with algesimeter, the possibility to monitor pain in hospitalised children is increased up to 84,3%. Taking into account the opinion of people working in paediatric units has been useful for us to identify areas of intervention: refresher courses, algesimeters and medical records updated with data on pain monitoring are the main requests.
Obviously, in addition to insiders, we have interviewed also 722 families, to consider the point of view of someone who takes care of little patients. In conclusion, we should work on a capillary training of paediatricians and hospital paediatrician, so that they could acquire instruments and specific abilities in the management of pain in children and in parallel we should provide social information to parents and children, in order to allow them to ask the right questions to the medical, nursing and psychological staff.
The pilot phase of the project “Spegni il dolore” will involve three hospitals, respectively of first, second and third level, on the whole national territory to integrate distant situations: Piedmont-Marche-Sicily; Veneto-Lazio-Puglia; Genova-Florence-Naples.