Abstract
Educating people to manage their headaches
After completing my PhD in neurophysiology and my research fellowship on headache in Liège (Belgium) with Prof Jean Schoenen, I came back to Italy where I was involved in, and later on in charge of, the headache clinic started by Prof Giuseppe Nappi at the IRCCS Istituto Neurologico Mediterraneo (Neuromed), an institution totally devoted to neurological diseases. The Neuromed is located in Pozzilli, a small countryside village in the center of Italy. Over the years our headache center grew up, offering at present one of the largest numbers of consultations for headache in Italy: about 4000 per year. My research interest is particularly focused on neurophysiology of headache and pain and on genetics of migraine, in collaboration with the Headache Centers of Liège, Latina (Italy) and Pavia (Italy). The great number of patients who consult our center, however, occupy most of the time of my collaborators and myself. Owing to the environment where we work, most of our patients never received a previous diagnosis and are totally naïve about their headaches and the way they can deal with them. Thus our main effort is to reassure them about the nature of their disease and to educate them to manage it in the most efficient way they can. Our research background is of great help for this aim, as our studies on headache neurophysiology allowed us in the past decades to have an excellent knowledge of headache pathophysiology and useful insights into headache management. As a member of the International Headache Society, I am delighted and committed to promoting high-quality research in the headache field, to spread as much as possible its outcomes and to increase headache awareness in the general population.
Anna Ambrosini