The National Fibromyalgia & Chronic Pain Association (NFMCPA) and the International Myopain Society have collaborated to create the Inaugural Treating and Preventing (TAP) Chronic Pain Conference to be held October 8 – 10, 2015 at the Crystal Gateway Marriott Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. The conference has been designed to offer an outstanding two day program focused on educating both health professionals and people with fibromyalgia or other pain conditions in how to treat and prevent these conditions, and providing helpful resources, scientific research and treatment options.
Also participating in the conference, representing the chiropractic profession, will be the not-for-profit Foundation for Chiropractic Progress (F4CP), an organization dedicated to raising awareness about the value of chiropractic care.
F4CP executive vice president Kristine Dowell will be one of some 40 roundtable participants representing government, regulatory and private sectors who will address fibromyalgia and chronic pain. Ms. Dowell, whose mission at the conference will be to advocate the valuable role chiropractic and integrative care can play for for chronic pain patients, says “F4CP is honored to be invited to this important event, and we look forward to close collaboration with the NFMCPA and the IMS in fulfilling their mission to bring effective treatment options to patients.”
“The NFMCPA and IMS teamed up to design a two-day program for patients and health care professionals to learn about scientific research, educational resources and beneficial treatment therapies including chiropractic care which provides services for over 200,000 constituents and connects with more than 135,000 Facebook fans,” says NFMCPA founder and president Jan Chambers.”During the roundtable discussion, we look forward to experts sharing current science about fibromyalgia from different fields to develop collaborative efforts in finding effective treatments for the more than 10 million people who suffer with this life-altering and debilitating condition.”
Nationally, the NFMCPA advocates for expanded access to better care for people with fibromyalgia in traditional as well as integrative, non-invasive clinical settings. Ms. Chambers received the 2015 Unsung Hero award from Gruenthal for her international advocacy work in the chronic pain field. The Unsung Hero Award is given to an individual who has made significant contributions to advance social awareness of pain and suffering for persons living with chronic pain. Criteria for the award are: relevance, impact, innovation, scope of outreach and commitment related to pain awareness, improvements and advancements in pain policies, such as Ms. Chambers’ promotion of development and recruitment of other organizations to the Consumer Pain Advocacy Task Force(CPATF) and support of the National Pain Strategy project The NFMCPA strongly supports implementation of the National Pain Strategy to advance research and insurance coverage for effective chronic pain treatments.
RELATED: Fibromyalgia Pain Has Central Nervous System Origins
The IMS is a nonprofit, interdisciplinary organization that includes research scientists, physicians, dentists, and other health care professionals, interested in exchanging ideas, conducting research, or learning more about prevention and care of chronic pain from musculoskeletal conditions such as myofascial pain, fibromyalgia and other disorders.
“We look forward to collaborating with the NFMCPA and the Foundation for Chiropractic Progress in an effort to educate the medical and patient communities about integrative approaches to treating chronic pain conditions, says IMS President Dr. James Fricton.
The program is specifically designed to educate health care professionals about how to prevent chronic pain; how to identify and treat myofascial pain and how to incorporate integrative medicine into treatment regimens for fibromyalgia and chronic pain patients. For people affected by these conditions the TAP Conference is an opportunity to learn more about science, integrative medicine and self-management of fibromyalgia and chronic pain. On a social level the conference offers opportunities for both health professionals and patients to converse about these topics and to learn from experts in this field of medicine.
The conference kicks-off with the President’s Reception on the evening of Thursday, October 8, from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM. The reception will offer TAP attendees the chance to re-connect with friends, meet conference speakers, and begin this valuable learning and sharing experience.
Conference highlights include a Keynote Address by Daniel Clauw, MD, a Professor of Anesthesiology, Medicine (Rheumatology) and Psychiatry at the University of Michigan, who also serves as Director of the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center. Dr. Clauw is a world renowned fibromyalgia and chronic pain researcher. He will talk about the state of fibromyalgia and chronic pain research and discuss its implications for patients and health professionals.
Speaker at a Friday Night Dinner is Dr. Lynn Webster, MD, vice president of Scientific Affairs of PRA Health Sciences, past president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, and author of the Painful Truth — an intimate collection of stories about people living with disabling pain, their attempts to heal, and the challenges that we collectively face in helping them live meaningful lives. As a physician who has treated people with chronic pain for more than thirty years, Dr. Webster reveals the difficulties that patients face in dealing with chronic pain in a society that is often shamefully prejudiced against those who are most in need of our empathy, and will share shares how such biases also affect medical professionals who treat patients with chronic pain.
Topics addressed in presentations and workshops at the TAP Chronic Pain Conference will include:
Chronic Pain Self-Management:
There is considerable lack of knowledge among health Care professionals (HCPs) who threat chronic pain and fibromyalgia symptoms about self-management approaches to addressing these conditions. The Conference program will offer several presentations on this topic which will identify different self-management approaches for clinicians to share with patients.
Integrative Medicine:
Integrative medicine paired with an interdisciplinary approach to fibromyalgia and chronic pain symptom management has been shown to be an important component in successful treatment protocols for fibromyalgia and chronic pain patients. However, the conference organizers note that clinicians often do not know how to incorporate these models into successful treatment regimens for patients. There will be several presentations at the conference addressing these elements, including cognitive behavior therapy, mindfulness, myofascial pain therapies, yoga, occupational therapy approaches and physical therapy treatments.
Sleep And Fibromyalgia:
Also not well known among general practice clinicians treating people with fibromyalgia is how to address sleep issues as a contributing factor to the syndrome in these patients. In fibromyalgia symptomology, sleep anomalies including sleep apnea and lack of stage IV sleep have been shown relevant to development and perpetuation of symptoms. The conference organizers reference a recent published study revealing the possibility of a diagnostic pattern of sleep patterns for fibromyalgia patients, with a presentation addressing how lack of sleep and sleep apnea can promote autonomic pain arousal and how doctors can help their patients by prescribing sleep labs in order to clearly identify specific sleep disorders that can then be treated.
Cervical Spinal Cord Compression:
Published studies have shown that 80% of patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia also have cervical spinal cord compression, a condition typically unknown by most clinicians. This is an issue say the conference organizers because fibromyalgia symptoms are so similar to those caused by cervical spinal stenosis that most clinicians never think about pursuing the cause for these neurological abnormalities in their patient group. To address this knowledge shortfall, a new MRI positional cervical cord compression protocol has been developed that more easily identifies the problem, which has in turn resulted in an effective physical therapy program for cervical spinal cord compression patients, and there will be presentations and workshops addressing these issues at the conference.
The Significance Of Myofascial Pain:
The conference organizers observe that 100 percent of fibromyalgia patients, as well as a large percentage of chronic pain patients also suffer with myofascial pain. However, because so little is generally known about myofascial pain and relevant treatment protocols, most clinicians miss this diagnosis even though it has been shown that patients can derive significant benefit from addressing myofascial pain by for example trigger point release. Several presentations at the conference will cover how to identify myofascial pain and treatments, including myofascial pain self-management techniques.
Unintended Consequences of Hydrocodone Rescheduling:
Zealous drug-hostile DEA and FDA regulations result in patients who should have the right to opioid prescription medications being denied adequate pain control for their chronic pain conditions. A conference presentation will address responses to a patient survey completed by 7,900 people about this issue and the rise in suicidal ideation caused by unaddressed withdrawal symptoms and increased pain associated with regulatory obstacles to therapeutic opioid access.
Small Fiber Neuropathy in Fibromyalgia
Researcher Dr. Frank Rice, will share his work with health care professionals including updates regarding ongoing research on Small Fiber Neuropathy in Fibromyalgia. A 2013 study by a team of researchers led by Dr. Rice published in Pain Medicine (the journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine), demonstrates that fibromyalgia may have a rational biological basis located in the skin. “Instead of being in the brain, the pathology consists of excessive sensory nerve fibers around specialized blood vessel structures located in the palms of the hands,” says Dr. Rice, who is President of Rensselaer, New York based Integrated Tissue Dynamics LLC (Intidyn), in a release. “This discovery provides concrete evidence of a fibromyalgia-specific pathology which can now be used for diagnosing the disease, and as a novel starting point for developing more effective therapeutics.”
Preventing Chronic Pain Campaign
Because the idea of preventing chronic pain is new and most clinicians do not know where to begin in addressing this issue. The University of Minnesota’s Preventing Chronic Pain Campaign educates practitioners regarding the steps necessary to solve this problem. The IMS’s Dr. James Fricton, will share information from his course on this subject.
Saturday afternoon is reserved for a variety of workshops delving further into the topics listed above and giving health professionals opportunities to learn about:
• Hands-on techniques in myofascial release
• Trigger point imaging before and after treatment
• Positional cervical cord compression physical therapy techniques
• A non-invasive rehabilitation program for people with fibromyalgia
• The MindfulHealth System: Using Online Personal Informatics to Reduce Symptoms in FM and Other Chronic Pain Conditions.
• Preventing Chronic Pain Campaign: This workshop gives clinicians the initial information and tools they need to begin making changes in their approach to preventing chronic pain.
More information on the People’s Campaign for Preventing Chronic Pain is available at:
http://igg.me/at/preventingpain and http://www.preventingchronicpain.org; and on and Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/preventingchronicpain and Twitter at @prevent_pain
You can register for the TAP Chronic Pain Conference and sign up for Saturday afternoon workshops at;
https://myopain.formstack.com/f\orms/untitled_form_1
Tickets are $295.00.
Hotel reservations can be booked by calling the Crystal Gateway Marriott Hotel, 1700 Jefferson Davis Hwy., Arlington, VA at 1-877-212-5752 Ask for the TAP Chronic Pain Conference room rate of $135.00 per night plus taxes. You can also make reservations online at: https://resweb.passkey.com/Resweb.do?mode=welcome_ei_new&eventID=13933532
Sources:
Treating and Preventing (TAP) Chronic Pain Conference
International Myopain Society
National Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain Association
Foundation for Chiropractic Progress
People’s Campaign for Preventing Chronic Pain
Integrated Tissue Dynamics LLC (Intidyn)
Pain Medicine
Grnenthal USA
Image Credits:
Treating and Preventing (TAP) Chronic Pain Conference
International Myopain Society
Integrated Tissue Dynamics LLC (Intidyn)