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Lions Award to Professor Lars Arendt-Nielsen Lars Arendt-Nielsen, Director of the Center for Sensory-Motor Interaction, received this year’s Lions Award for his efforts benefitting chronic pain patients. The award was presented by HRH Prince Henrik at Christian IX’s Palace at Amalienborg a hyperexcitable state that can cause patients to still experience chronic pain after an operation that was otherwise technically successful.
Professor Lars Arendt-Nielsen and his research group at the Center for Sensory-Motor Interaction were recognized for commended for their great effort in developing knowledge and practical treatment for pain patients in Denmark. The research team was also praised for having the world’s largest and most productive research center for pain research, with well-developed international contacts, that has helped to increase global knowledge of pain patients’ conditions.
We hope that our measurements before an operation can be developed to become so refined that we can predict whether a given patient’s pain system is in a condition that makes them more likely to develop chronic pain after surgery. Chronic pain after an operation affects between 10 and 50 percent of all patients depending on the type of operation. So there are many people that can be helped. Particularly if with the technology we can also find a treatment that normalizes the pain system’s condition before surgery, and thus hopefully reduce the number of patients affected by this type of chronic pain, says Lars ArendtNielsen.
The year’s Lions Award of 250,000 kroner will go to a research project at three hospitals in Northern Jutland investigating the impact of osteoarthritis on the pain system. I am grateful to have received the recognition of the Lions Award 2012 of 250,000 kroner. The money will be invested in our research project that will give us an understanding of why many patients with osteoarthritis of the knee still have chronic pain after they have had surgery and have gotten a new knee, says Lars Arendt-Nielsen.
The Lions Award is given by Lions Denmark, an international NGO that was established in 1917 in the United States and came to Denmark in 1950. Lions Denmark is dedicated to fostering community understanding and peace and donates approximately 35-50 million kroner annually for humanitarian purposes including the Lions Award. In Denmark, the Lions Award is given to individuals or institutions to contribute to research and development works of a medical, cultural and social nature that improve the living conditions of Danish citizens.
The research group has developed high-technology quantitative measurement methods to be used to study the changes happening in the pain system when someone has chronic pain such as with osteoarthritis. The research group presumes that these changes put the pain system in
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