Coinciding with the celebration of World Parkinson’s Day tomorrow, Tuesday, April 11, The neurologist from the Santiago University Hospital Complex Ángel Sesar will moderate an informative day organized by the Cimus Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology of Parkinson’s Disease Research Group and the CHUS Neurology Service at the Faculty of Medicineand in which patients and health personnel related to this condition will participate.
Disclosure day with patients and researchers
The neurologist from the Ángel Sesar Clinic and the researcher from the Cimus Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology of Parkinson’s Disease Group, Ana Isabel Rodríguez, will be in charge of moderating and conducting the conference on this pathology that will take place this coming Tuesday at the Faculty of Compostela. of Medicine. A meeting in which members of patient associations such as Parkinson’s Galicia-Coruña, Acem: Compostelá Association of Multiple Sclerosis, Ourense Association of Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s and Rare Diseases, Parkinson’s Association province of Pontevedra, Parkinson’s Association of Vigo and Parkinson’s Association Ferrol.
The informative day will be attended by more than 250 people, and in it the professor José Luis Labandeira and the neurologists Ángel Sesar, Gustavo Pajarín, Diego Santos and Carmen Labandeira will give talks on the current and future lines of research that are being contemplated in the fight against Parkinson’s, as well as the success of classic medications such as Levodopa and the implementation of treatments such as HIFU.
In addition, representatives and patients from the different groups who have confirmed their attendance will share their experience with the disease with specialists and researchers.
It is “an informative event in which basic researchers will explain to patients how different drugs are experimented with in animals, and in what way and under what conditions these tests are then passed on to human beings, and in which clinicians “We will talk about present and future treatments of the disease,” emphasizes the coordinator of the Movement disorders of the Clinician’s Neurology Service in a conversation with EL CORREO.
It is estimated that the Clinic treats 1,700 patients, the majority of them from Galicia, although also from abroad.
Sesar assures that this appointment represents a magnificent opportunity to share with the patients and “explain to them how they can deal with this disease, since many times in the usual consultation we do not have the necessary time, in addition to this meeting also allowing us to exchange impressions ” about his situation.
He considers that the informative aspect is very important and “it must be developed well and realistically, since on numerous occasions there is talk of advances that are not realistic, too much importance is given to certain studies that later, when you see how they are done or the number of subjects, you observe that there is no reliable way to establish conclusions, and even less so if we take into account that the fact that a therapy works in animals does not mean that it will do the same in humans.”
Sesar clarifies that some of these scientific studies can serve, in any case, to advance in a disease that in the CHUS unit “We treat 1,517 people, about 1,700 in the Clinic because not all of them are in this unit”and regarding their origin he explains that although the majority are Galicians from the health area, there are also those from outside.
Convinced that the main challenge in the fight against Parkinson’s is “get a treatment that stops the disease because at this moment there is none”admits that for now these are therapies that “act on the symptoms and are very effective, but do not interfere with the evolution of the disease.”
He acknowledges that the origin of most cases of Parkinson’s is unknown, about which he says that “in reality they are different diseases that come together in a common mechanism,” and adds that by knowing the origin of only some very rare cases ” It is very difficult to find a treatment that cures”, although also remember that there are different lines of research that are being worked on.
The neurologist emphasizes the fact that we are facing “a heterogeneous condition, which manifests itself differently in each patient, with different needs, and which also progresses differently by adjusting the treatment to each patient”, and remembers what they said to him when he was starting out in medicine, insisting that “do not forget that there are no diseases but only the sick.” Regarding the therapies that are being used at this time, he indicates that they have changed a lot over the last few years, and advocates giving way to those planned for a more advanced phase when the first ones no longer obtain results, since that “when oral drugs stop working, surgery can be used.”
This is why Sesar says that “we neurologists are transmitting to the youngest that if the first-line drugs fail, there is no need to wait, it is important to realize when this change in therapeutic paradigm is needed, which provides a quality of life unthinkable before.”
In fact, he claims that “the patient has gained between five and ten years of quality of life” in recent times, and clarifies that surgery for this disease began to be performed two decades ago, and that infusion therapies have been used for about fifteen years, but perhaps more could be indicated.
Regarding the use of high-intensity focused ultrasound therapy (HIFU), he explains that “without having to open the brain, it allows us to injure that structure that is working too much and restore normal brain activity,” although he clarifies that “it works very good for tremor, but in Parkinson’s it has not yet been generalized, perhaps in the future it will be and it will allow us to change the approach to this disease in its advanced stages.”
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