The Multidisciplinary Pain Congress takes place on 16, 17 and 18 September in Porto, at the Fundação António Cupertino de Miranda. The programme is worth a look beforehand, because it says something about the state of the field.
What is on the programme
Multidisciplinary pain assessment. Paediatric pain. Musculoskeletal physical examination. Orthoses. Pharmacotherapy: anti-inflammatories, corticosteroids, opioids, paracetamol, adjuvant drugs. Neuropathic pain. Referral to orthopaedics and to physical and rehabilitation medicine. The role of general practice.
It is a solid programme and it is a largely pharmacological one. In the public programme there is no session dedicated to non-pharmacological approaches or to technology.
This is not a criticism of the congress. It is a faithful portrait of where the centre of gravity of pain medicine sits in Portugal — and anyone selling or buying something else is better off knowing that than pretending otherwise.
The question left over
If pain is multidisciplinary enough to put orthopaedics, physical medicine, paediatrics and general practice in one room, why does the non-pharmacological usually enter only through the physiotherapy door?
Part of the answer is good: pharmacotherapy has decades of trials, doses, contraindications and comparable scales behind it. That is accumulated knowledge, and enthusiasm does not dislodge it.
Part of the answer is less good: the non-pharmacological often arrives wrapped in promises it cannot support. Anyone who has heard "this cuts pain by 40%" from a salesperson with no trial behind them is rightly wary the next time.
A prescriber's scale is not enthusiasm, it is evidence. A tool that overclaims today pays for it for years, in every conversation that follows.
What virtual reality is, in this conversation
An alternative focus of attention during a procedure or a treatment. Nothing more than that, and nothing less.
What RVer does is place the person inside a filmed environment, with ambisonic sound, while the team does what it has to do. It is not analgesia. It replaces no drug, changes no dose and removes no clinical decision. Whether it makes sense for that patient, at that moment, is decided by whoever follows them.
We wrote in more detail about where this fits — and where it does not — in the pain clinic: where virtual reality fits and virtual reality in the emergency department.
If you are going, three useful questions
Not for the speakers. To take back to the department:
- Which procedures are the ones where waiting and anticipation weigh most? Those, not "pain" in general, define where a non-pharmacological approach is tried first.
- Who is responsible for running it and recording it? Without a name, any pilot ends up in a drawer.
- What will be measured, and compared against what? With no before, there is no after.
They are the same three questions we ask anyone who requests a demonstration. They sell nothing — but they separate a project that will happen from a project that will be discussed.
Source: Multidisciplinary Pain Congress 2026, 16–18 September, Porto.