Doctor Aldo Bova
“The first inequality in health is to the detriment of suffering elderly people, too often, even today, neglected in our health facilities, perhaps for reasons of mere budget and cost-benefit calculation over time”, the complaint is made by Professor Aldo Bova, chief emeritus of orthopedics of the San Gennaro hospital, in Naples, as well as national president of the Forum of social and health associations. “These economic reasons are sad from a human point of view, but also short-sighted and reckless from a socio-economic point of view, because if an elderly person is in good health and does not suffer, it does not create problems for the family and does not become a cost to society and the health system that must take care of it with treatment and rehabilitation. This also happens in my sector. I say this from long experience in the field: the laws provide, for example, the creation of structures to combat chronic pain, but in Campania, where I work, often and willingly an elderly person who has back pain and needs suitable therapies does not know where to go and the national health system does not give him the treatment he would be entitled to. others that offer nothing “.
Just to talk about lumbago in the third and fourth age, a widespread suffering in those over 60, the medical conference “Low back pain in the elderly. Healing with competence and love ”with the patronage of the Social and Health Forum and of many important realities in the world of care.
This pathology affects, according to the statistics, from 60 to 80% of people and in people with advanced age the episodes increase in number, intensity and duration. “The so-called back pain – explains Bova – affects women the most: out of 10 elderly people who come to me for osteoarticular problems 7 are women and 3 males. It is certainly a pathology that has great relevance for the suffering person because it generates functional limitation, reduction of autonomy; this naturally worsens the picture in a person with an advanced age already with multiple pathologies and therefore problems in the medical therapy to be used. Low back pain, especially in the elderly and, especially in the elderly, directly involve the family, society, politics, which have the ethical and moral duty to be close to such sufferings and promote their treatment, assistance and, if possible, their recovery and rehabilitation “.
Professor Bova, together with the orthopedic colleagues of the Scientific Committee of the San Gennaro Study Group, wanted to create an opportunity to meet on the topic, involving authoritative experts from the academic world, the hospital world, the territory and institutions, right after the institution in 2021 of the World Year. against pain dedicated to back pain.
The purpose of the event is first of all to talk and disseminate among doctors, including those of the family and not only specialists, and the patients themselves, the new techniques to combat the most frequent pain in the elderly, that is, back pain, the latest products of research, such as the use of radiofrequency, of which the former primary is a specialist, and stem cells. The world of treatment for low back pain and musculoskeletal pain is in great evolution. There are news for the purpose of understanding the multiple and complex causes and for the purposes of various types of treatments. These innovations are little known in the healthcare world and much less among patients. Scientific research with the knowledge of the results and the exchange of experiences in the field by doctors and health professionals in the sector are very useful for modernizing, improving and making the study and treatment of low back pain more effective, especially in the phase of fragility related to old age.
“Pain therapy – explains Bova – with radiofrequency in the case of low back pain, which offers positive results in 80 percent of cases, consists in acting with the passage of current through a needle, connected to a dispensing device, in the region of the articular facets, very rich in painful terminations. These terminations, which receive the painful stimuli and pass them to the brain, are thus deactivated. The articular facets are a part of the posterior interapophyseal joints placed laterally between the vertebrae “.
But the conference, in addition to highlighting the need for competence in the sector for the study and treatment of this pathology, also wants to underline the importance of humanity and the loving spirit on the part of the treating staff. Among other things, the theme of spirituality in the approach to physical pain and the theme of pain in art and art and beauty in pain will be addressed.
In short, an approach that starts from the suffering person, concludes Bova “knowing that one is faced with a human person with his physicality, his psychological conditions, his spirituality, his culture, his family and socio-economic conditions. the origin of the pain; know the means available for therapy, from pharmacological to physiotherapeutic and rehabilitative ones, to psychological, microsurgical, surgical ones; understand that for the elderly person suffering from chronic low back pain, the attitude of care ‘and the human and empathic attitude of the treating staff; to allow patients to reacquire the autonomy of management of their own person and of relations with the community in the best possible way “.
A moment of solidarity and closeness to the Ukrainian people is expected at the meeting in Pozzuoli. Elena Bannikova, professor at the University of Karkiv, internationally renowned scientist, who in this period is working in Naples at the Astronomical Observatory, was invited to attend astrophysics.