Some unrelated jottings during a couple if boring conference sessions.
I had a sense of unease and frustration from day one at the conference. As english is my first and only language, I can’t morally complain about a failure to comprehend when the presenter has a thick Russian accent at a conference in Hungary. Secondly I am bombarded by the very worst convoluted unfathomable PowerPoint slides. Finally at least two sessions discussed new and novel ways to deliver medication to the patient using inventions that have been engineered in a small start up company in which, if one reads the small print of the financial disclosure, the presenter has an interest.
Many of the papers described using various types of electrical or magnetic stimulation of specific superficial cranial nerves.
Unashamedly, enrolled patient numbers in these trials were often less than a few dozen! All one can categorically state is that based on statistically questionable studies of a few migraneurs, these medical technology companies will make many millions of dollars.
Migraine is often crippling with protracted vomiting. So a minute pump with silastic tubing could deliver the abortive drug into the rectum. How this might work is conjectural but it would certainly take the focus away from the head. Imagine what a creative advertising company could come up with
” yes we know, migraine is a bummer…”
“Migraine – get your head round this…”
” Migraine – does not have to be a pain in the butt.. Or does it?”
” Migraine – we have the answer to your annus horribilus”
” We guarantee to get to the bottom of your migraine”.
Another technology company displayed a leather upholstered reclining chair with a circular magnet which sat on and around the skull. Picture an expensive old fashioned hair salon perm chair but more like a Jason recliner. Elderly patients who were mildly forgetful, sat in this contraption and whilst a high powered magnetic field swirled around their skull, at the same time they were submitted to mind games on a computer screen. Doing this every day for a few months apparently improved their mental ability which was maintained for at least 12 months.
Surfing my news feeds threw up this bit of fascinating trivia: the results of a 2011 census found only 2,418 self-identified Scientologists in England and Wales. (In contrast, 176,632 respondents identified as Jedi Knights.)
Back to the conference! Hans Lassman a member of the faculty presenting on MS looked for all the world like Victor Borge and on beginning his presentation , had his voice and accent!
day 1 was held in the Hungarian Academy of Science
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