A survey in 12 European countries has found that between 20 and 50 per cent of those surveyed had experienced severe pain, a consultant in anaesthesia and pain medicine will tell a medical meeting in Galway tonight.
Dr David O'Gorman, of University College Hospital, Galway, will tell doctors that post-operative pain is undertreated in hospitals here, and that US studies have shown that women and those of ethnic minorities do not receive the same quality of pain management as others.
"The consequences of chronic pain are significant. It affects people's quality of life, and means they are five times more likely to use the health service as those without pain," Dr O'Gorman said yesterday. .
Dr Jeffrey Kelman, medical director of the Collington Lifecare Centre in Washington, DC, will deliver a special guest lecture, "JFK - a profile of perseverance through pain", at tonight's meeting, which is organised by the Irish Pain Society and sponsored by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
He was the first doctor to be given access to Kennedy's medical records which had been sealed for 40 years. Dr Kelman was allowed view the late files as part of presidential historian Robert Dallek's preparation for his recently published book, JFK- The Unfinished Life.
"At age 23 - 24, JFK had the medical record of a 70-year-old," Dr Kelman told The Irish Times last night. "Typically, he took nine different oral medications a day, as well as needing a series of injections. It is obvious from records that health issues governed the day-to-day activities of John F Kennedy's life."
