Pain and Bone Disease: A Patient’s View

Pain in thalassemia proves to be an emergent issue even if it is not possible to correlate it definitely to bone disease, but we strongly believe that a multidisciplinary approach, may be as decisive in this case as it was in the struggle against thalassemia. In fact, we strongly believe that the involvement of various specialists such as endocrinologists, orthopedist, anesthesiologist, in a close team coordinated by a specialist in thalassemia is absolutely necessary for achieving our aims. First of all, we need to implement clinical trials to identify the mechanisms of disease, to find the optimal management of the problem in order to provide new therapeutic methods for preventing the thalassemia-induced osteoporosis and to reduce the presence of very disabling pain for patients. Patients’ expectations for the future are to continuously improve the quality of life. To do that it is needed to identify pathways to prevent all the complications of thalassemia that cause widespread pain, above all osteoporosis. Although we have seen that osteoporosis is not the sole cause of pain for thalassemia patients, it is true that this seems to have a great incidence in thalassemia patients and it gives a significant contribute to an increased pain.