“Introducing the Fifth Vital Sign: The Importance and Treatment of Pain”

Respiration, blood pressure, pulse rate, and temperature are the four famous vital signs. Each of them provides essential information about the general functioning of our body and can indicate the existence of a disease. It is curious that, however, the main reason for consulting medical professionals is quite another: the pain. The appearance of it is perceived by all as a clear alarm signal and makes us immediately go to the doctor. Some consider it the fifth vital sign, since thanks to pain professionals can confirm or rule out diseases, focus on the origin and, ultimately, facilitate diagnosis. The pain, however, It is also a health problem for many people.. When it is chronic or persistent, it can end up determining –for the worse– the quality of life of patients. With the idea of ​​improving it, the first Pain Units in the middle of the 20th century, a specialty, or set of specialties, that has an increasing presence, both in private and public medicine, and with which it is intended to respond to a health problem as important as pain. Almost 20% of the Western population suffers from chronic pain, placing these figures among one of the most prevalent diseases in the developed world. Common problems like sciatica, cervical, low back pain or more special cases such as pain in athletes (for example, that of the tennis player Rafael Nadal, who receives radiofrequency treatment to alleviate the pain in one of his feet) constitute today the day-to-day life of many people and the work of the Pain Units. It is “an organization of health professionals that provides multidisciplinary care services to people with pain” – as explained by the doctor angel martinezmember of the Pain Unit of the Hospital Quirónsalud Huelva– “requiring specialized care”. The main function of the Pain Units is to treat people with chronic pain “from a comprehensive perspective, with special emphasis on treatment with complex drugs and complex interventional techniques that require a high degree of specialization”, such as infiltrations, blocks and others. .

Medicine in Huelva has taken a giant step with the start-up of the new Pain Unit at Hospital Quirónsalud, which is made up of two specialists in Anesthesiology, Resuscitation and Pain Treatment (doctors Isaac Pena and Ángel Martínez) and a clinical assistant (María Batanero) with extensive experience and recognition in the diagnosis and treatment of pain at the Virgen del Rocío University Hospital and the Valme University Hospital in Seville, where they are responsible for the management of the Pain. It is a Pain Unit made up of highly qualified professionals in the diagnosis and treatment of pain, which is incorporated into the Service Portfolio of the Quirónsalud Huelva Hospital to bring “dedication, enthusiasm and commitment, both human and professional, to solve the health problem that pain represents in the population of Huelva, quality, safety, innovation and efficiency”, says Dr. Martínez, for whom the problem of pain in the Spanish population in general and in Andalusia in particular is of such magnitude “that pain units are becoming leaders in addressing this health problem ”.

The future of pain treatment “is aimed at the increasingly frequent use of complex techniques that require a high level of training that allow reducing the consumption of analgesic drugs and their potential adverse effects”. This “is already a reality” in the Pain Unit of the Hospital Quirónsalud Huelva, a reference center for private healthcare in the province, with a complete portfolio of services and cutting-edge technology, Emergencies and 24-hour ICU as well as neonatal ICU.