About this event

  • Date and time Mon 10 Oct 2022 from 10:00am to 5:00pm
  • Location Online
  • Organised by Pain Medicine

Fibromyalgia is a lifelong condition which causes pain all over the body, as well as other symptoms including fatigue, sleep problems and psychological distress. Although the exact cause is unknown, it is possible for patients to be successfully treated and managed.

This meeting, held in association with Fibromyalgia Action UK, will provide a forum for healthcare professionals, academics and patients with lived experience of fibromyalgia, to come together and learn from each other.

Attendees will be provided with updates about the current state of scientific knowledge and best clinical practice to promote the best possible outcomes and quality of life for people living with fibromyalgia. 

Participants will be able to: 

  • Be aware of the latest research into the causes of fibromyalgia 
  • Understand lived experience of patients with fibromyalgia and how it impacts treatment delivery
  • Gain clarity of current controversies 
  • Understand the range of treatment options available
  • Understand how to implement current management guidelines in the NHS as well as self-management


This webinar is available for on-demand viewing. The webinar recording will be available for registered event participants up to 60 days after the live webinar broadcast via Zoom. The link will be sent 3 days after the webinar takes place. 

 

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Key speakers

Dr Deepak Ravindran

Clinical Lead in Pain Medicine, Royal Berkshire Hospital

Speaker's biography

Dr Deepak Ravindran is a boundary spanning ‘upstreamist’ with a trauma informed approach to pain practice. He has over 20 years of experience in Pain Management and is Clinical Lead in Pain Medicine at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, Berkshire, UK. He is one of the very few consultants in the UK who holds certification in musculoskeletal medicine, pain medicine and board certified in lifestyle medicine. He lectures nationally and internationally on issues in long COVID, Pain Medicine and Trauma informed practice and has regularly spoken to the media and television on these issues.  

 

He has had a longstanding interest in Fibromyalgia and has worked with FMA UK and also the local FM patient support group. He secured funding and organised 2 awareness days for FM in Berkshire in 2018 and 2019. He helped establish the community pain service in Berkshire (IPASS) in 2015 and more recently helped set up and operationalise the Berkshire long COVID Integrated Service (BLIS) in 2020. He initiated Pain research in his department and is an active part of the Pain Research Network at the University of Reading. He has been recently completed his degree in Management at the Henley Business School.  

 

Dr Ravindran is part of the scientific advisory board at Curable, MyPain and also part of the Footsteps Festival team and a FlippinPain Friend. He is also an advisor to UK’s first Online Pain Clinic The Leva Clinic.  

 

Dr Deepak Ravindran is the author of Amazon Best Seller “The Pain Free Mindset” released in 2021. This book is aimed at patients suffering with pain, but is also immensely useful for all healthcare professionals in understanding recent advances around pain management in a trauma informed manner.  

Professor Ernest Choy

Honorary Consultant Rheumatologist, University Hospital of Wales, Head of Rheumatology and Translational Research, Cardiff University School of Medicine

Speaker's biography

Professor Ernest Choy is Head of Rheumatology and Translational Research at the Division of Infection and Immunity and Director of the Cardiff Regional Experimental Arthritis Treatment and Evaluation (CREATE) Centre at Cardiff University School of Medicine, Cardiff, Wales, UK. He is also Honorary Consultant Rheumatologist at University Hospital of Wales and Clinical Lead of the Welsh Arthritis Research Network (WARN). Prof Choy chaired the EULAR Taskforce on developing recommendations for management and classification criteria for fibromyalgia in 2007 and is currently a member of the EULAR Quality of Care Committee. Prof Choy has served as clinical expert to the National Institute for Clinical Excellence in the UK as well as many other pharmaceutical companies. He has been widely published on treatments for rheumatic diseases in major medical journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet.

Professor Winfried Häuser

Senior Physician, Department of Internal Medicine, Academic Hospital Saarbrücken, Adjunct Professor for Psychosomatic Medicine, Technical University Munich, Germany

Speaker's biography

Winfried Häuser is a specialist in General Internal Medicine, Psychosomatic Medicine and Pain Medicine. He is Senior Physician of the department of Internal Medicine I (gastroenterology, hepatology, oncology, infectious diseases psychosomatic medicine) at the Academic Hospital Saarbrücken in Germany. He is also a member of the Medical Center for Pain Medicine and Mental Health Care in Saarbrücken and offers special consultant hours for patients with fibromyalgia and chronic abdominal pain. He is Adjunct Professor of Psychosomatic Medicine at the Technical University Munich, Germany and is researching psychosomatic aspects of bowel diseases, functional somatic syndromes (fibromyalgia and irritable bowel syndrome, chronic pelvic pain), evidence-based medicine and health care. He is a member of the medical board for the German Fibromyalgia Association and a co-editor of the Cochrane Pain, Palliative and Supportive Care Group.

 

Professor Häuser was the head of the steering committee of the German guidelines on fibromyalgia and opioids in chronic non-cancer pain and member of the steering group of the EULAR recommendations on the management of fibromyalgia. He was head of the EFIC task force for a position paper on cannabis-based medicines for chronic pain as well as opioids for chronic noncancer pain. He has published over 300 papers on chronic pain conditions (celiac disease, chronic inflammatory bowel diseases, fibromyalgia and irritable bowel syndrome) in peer-reviewed journals, including systematic reviews on pharmacological, psychological, physical and complementary/alternative therapies for chronic pain conditions. His H-Index is 89. 

Dr Andreas Goebbel

Consultant in Pain Medicine, Liverpool Walton Centre, Associate Professor, University of Liverpool

Speaker's biography

Andreas Goebel was raised in Wiesbaden, Germany and trained in Anaesthesia/Pain Medicine in Germany and the UK, as well as post-trauma immunology in Boston. He was appointed Consultant in Pain Medicine at the Liverpool Walton Centre in 2007 and Assistant/Associate Professor at the University of Liverpool in 2008/2016.

 

Andreas’ research has focused on the role of the adaptive immune system in causing chronic pain. He first proposed that ‘unexplained’ chronic pains may be caused by non-destructive, non-inflammatory IgG autoantibodies and suggested using passive transfer experimental approaches to investigate this. His work has resulted in the establishment of new rodent models, and clinical immune modulation trials for unexplained pains.

 

Andreas has been chairing the UK Royal College of Physicians guidelines groups for Fibromyalgia syndrome and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. He sees patients at the Walton Centre Hospital in Liverpool in secondary and tertiary care outpatient clinics, Pain Management Program assessment clinics, and in operation theatres for neuromodulation trials.

Agenda

View the programme

Welcome and introduction

Session 1

Chair: Mr Des Quinn, Chair, Fibromyalgia Action UK

Climbing the mountain

Ms Louise Trewern, Vice Chair, Patient Voice Committee, British Pain Society

Comfort break
Improving outcomes: European guidelines

Professor Ernest Choy, Head of Rheumatology and Translational Research, Institute of Infection and Immunity and Director, Cardiff Regional Experimental Arthritis Treatment and Evaluation Centre, School of Medicine, Cardiff University

Comfort break
Fibromyalgia: Between the known, unknown and controversial

Professor Winfried Häuser, Consultant in Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Pain Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Saarbrücken Academic Hospital, Germany

Lunch break

Session 2

Chair: Dr Rebecca Berman, Consultant in Pain Medicine, Royal Derby Hospital

Immunity and fibromyalgia

Dr Andreas Goebbel, Reader and Honorary Consultant in Pain Medicine and Director, Pain Research Institute, University of Liverpool

Comfort break
Fibromyalgia: An integrated approach

Dr Deepak Ravindran, Consultant in Pain Medicine, Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust

Cooking on a high fibre diet

Mr Ian Taverner, Author, Cookfulness

Comfort break
Moving

Ms Leila Heelas, Clinical Physiotherapy Lead, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Dr Anushka Soni, Clinical Research Fellow, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Dr Sandra Wiltshire, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Comfort break
Panel discussion with all speakers

Chairs: Mr Des Quinn and Dr Rebecca Berman

Close of meeting

Location

Online

Registration for this webinar will close 2 hours prior to the start time. Late registrations will not be accepted. 

The agenda is subject to change at any time.

If the event is recorded, we are only able to share presentations that we have received permission to share.

There is no guarantee that all sessions will be available after the event, this is at the presenter’s and RSM discretion.

All views expressed at this event are of the speakers themselves and not of the Royal Society of Medicine, nor the speaker's organisations.

This event will be recorded and stored by the Royal Society of Medicine and may be distributed in future on various internet channels.

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