It concluded with a closed-door meeting at Palazzo Pirelli, headquarters of the Lombardy Regional Council, the last in a series of working tables on sleep disorders and chronic insomniato. The event – explains a note – was part of the overall path curated by FB & Associati and created with the unconditional contribution of Idorsia, which took place in recent months along two lines: the national one, which saw its conclusion in during the conference presenting the policy brief on chronic insomnia in June 2023, and the regional one with three local events in Lazio, Puglia and Lombardy. The working tables saw national and regional political-institutional stakeholders as protagonists, in comparison with the top national experts on the pathology and with the main scientific societies of reference on the most emergency and relevant issues for this disease.
L'Chronic insomnia is identified as a sleep disorder which represents a huge problem important from an epidemiological and social point of view, affecting up to 10% of the global population. The recognition of the quality and duration of sleep is essential for the well-being of the individual, although – from what was shared in these working groups – it emerges that today it is still an unsatisfied need. Due to its high relevance, the notable impact on psychophysical well-being and work performance, chronic insomnia represents an important challenge not only for health, but also for politics. Its evaluation and management in the initial stages should be a priority in order to best identify strategies that improve the prevention and treatment of the disease and its comorbidities, to increase people's quality of life, increase their performance and reduce costs incurred from public health spending.
Among the national political representatives who actively intervened to shine a light on the pathology Ignazio Zullo, X Commission of Social Affairs, Health, Public and Private Work, Social Security of the Senate, who underlined how “the dialogue established with the clinical world has highlighted the need of seeking normative, regulatory and organizational solutions, in the face of new scientific awareness. Precisely for this reason – he recalled – in the month of July 2023 I filed a bill with the Senate of the Republic which provides for an update of the chronic pathologies included in within the essential levels of assistance, also providing for the inclusion of chronic insomnia. In this way, the large population of people suffering from these disorders would at least have protection from a legislative point of view”.
The president of the Italian Association of Sleep Medicine (Aims), Francesco Fanfulla, has identified a further critical issue in the current structure of socio-health policies, relating to the care of people with insomnia: the absence of a diagnostic therapeutic care path coded. “The provision of a Pdta, a central tool for the clinical governance of various pathologies, especially chronic ones, would allow the medical and scientific world to guarantee more effective care of the sleepless patient – underlined Fanfulla – The need for a univocal tool , valid at a national level and then adapted by the Regions based on specific territorial needs, has emerged forcefully from the work that has taken place in recent months. The hope is that the Ministry of Health will take up the appeal of Aims, but also of the other scientific societies involved in this process, establishing an ad hoc, multi-professional technical table and with the participation of patient organisations”.
During the discussion, the patients highlighted a poor perception of listening to family doctors, who represent the first point of arrival for the sleepless patient. The reasons – continues the note – are certainly to be found in the consolidated tendency of people to self-manage the insomnia problem, who therefore do not report it to their family doctor, but also in a little widespread sensitivity of general practitioners to consider a sleep disorder as a real health problem.
“To respond to this problem – concluded Ilenia Malavasi, XII Social Affairs Commission of the Chamber – I questioned the Ministry of Health asking it to promote training initiatives aimed primarily at general practitioners and other healthcare professionals, aimed at improving the knowledge of the insomnia problem, for example by including sleep medicine in the training of general practitioners. It is important to shed light on the negative consequences deriving from the lack of adequate sleep on people's state of health and quality of life, so that we can resort to a more appropriate use of drugs, with referral to specialist centers for forms of disease that are more difficult to manage”.
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