The increase in life expectancy and advances in health have led to a significant increase in the number of surgical interventions in recent years and therefore a greater number of patients suffering from chronic post-surgical pain. As Carles Espinós, an anaesthesiologist and lecturer at the Department of Medicine explains: “This kind of pain has been undervalued for many years. We believe that predicting the development of pain after certain surgical interventions would help minimise its social and economic impact, as well as improve the quality of life of patients.”

The Gendolcat index is the only predictive model that exclusively uses pre-surgical variables to assess the risk of chronic pain after an operation. However, “it is only tested on four types of surgeries among which the caesarean section, the most prevalent intervention in the world, is not found,” says Espinós. The study will serve as the main axis of his doctoral thesis, which is co-directed by Pere Castellví, researcher of the Department of Medicine of the University, and Gisela Roca, doctor at the University Hospital Sacred Heart, titled “Validation of the Gendolcat score for the prognosis of post-surgical chronic pain in caesarean sections”. The research group led by Espinós is proposing “a multicentre prospective study with the aim of evaluating the validity of the Gendolcat predictive model in caesarean sections and, if necessary, developing a new one”.

Accordingly, “obtaining the AGAUR grant is a great motivation to continue working and giving visibility to a fairly frequent, but little recognised problem, such as the chronic pain suffered by women after a caesarean section,” the researcher explained.

This grant has been awarded by the Agency for the Management of University and Research Grants (AGAUR) to companies, entities and research organisations that develop industrial doctoral projects. Currently, UIC Barcelona has three industrial doctoral projects underway.