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Review
. 2019 Apr;25(5):627-636.
doi: 10.1177/1352458518807082. Epub 2018 Oct 23.

The Multiple Sclerosis Care Unit

Per Soelberg Sorensen  1 , Gavin Giovannoni  2 , Xavier Montalban  3 , Christoph Thalheim  4 , Paola Zaratin  5 , Giancarlo Comi  6
Affiliations
Review

The Multiple Sclerosis Care Unit

Per Soelberg Sorensen et al. Mult Scler. 2019 Apr.

Abstract

Treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) has become increasingly multifaceted and comprises not only a variety of disease-modifying drugs with different mechanism of action but also a wide range of symptomatic therapies. Today, it is not possible for the family physician or even many general neurologists to master the current treatment algorithm, and this calls for the establishment of multidisciplinary MS Care Units. The core of the MS Care Unit would, in addition to MS neurologists and nurses, typically comprise neuropsychologists, clinical psychologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and secretaries, and will work together with a group of different specialists on formalized diagnostic workup procedures, protocols for initiation and follow-up of disease-modifying therapies. It is obvious that the terms of performance of different MS Care Units will vary across regions and need to be balanced with clinical practice according to local conditions. Although the main objective for establishment of MS Care Units will be to offer the single MS patient seamless and correct management of the disease to increase patient satisfaction and quality of life, it may even be cost-effective for the society by maintaining the working ability and reducing the costs of home help and custodial care by keeping people with MS resourceful.

Keywords: Multiple sclerosis; multiple sclerosis care; multiple sclerosis disease-modifying therapy; multiple sclerosis multidisciplinary management; multiple sclerosis symptomatic treatment; multiple sclerosis treatment.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: P.S.S. has received personal compensation for serving on scientific advisory boards, steering committees or independent data monitoring boards for Biogen, Merck, Novartis, TEVA, GlaxoSmithKline, MedDay Pharmaceuticals, Genzyme, Celgene and Forward Pharma and has received speaker honoraria from Biogen, Merck, Teva, Genzyme and Novartis. His department has received research support from Biogen, Merck, TEVA, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis/Genzyme, RoFAR and Roche. G.G. has received compensation for serving as a consultant or speaker for, or has received research support from AbbVie, Actelion, Atara Bio, Biogen, Canbex, Celgene, Sanofi Genzyme, Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck-Serono, Novartis, Roche, Synthon BV and Teva. X.M. has received speaking honoraria and travel expenses for participation in scientific meetings, has been a steering committee member of clinical trials or participated in advisory boards of clinical trials in the past years with Actelion, Almirall, Bayer, Biogen, Celgene, Genzyme, Merck, Novartis, Oryzon Genomics, Roche, Sanofi Genzyme and Teva Pharmaceutical. C.T. has, in his capacity as consultant for EU health affairs, received consultancy fees by Gruenenthal and by PharmaGenesis. In his capacity as Director External Affairs of the European MS Platform, he served in advisory boards and/or workshops by Biogen, Merck, Novartis, Sanofi Genzyme, Servier and Takeda. His employer, the European MS Platform, has received unrestricted project grants from Actelion, Almirall, Bayer, Biogen, icometrix, MedDay, Merck, Mylan, Novartis, Roche, Sanofi Genzyme, SCA, Servier, Synthon, Terumo and Teva. P.Z. has no conflict of interest to declare. G.C. has received personal compensation, outside this work, for participating in scientific advisory boards and for speaking activities from Novartis, Teva, Sanofi Genzyme, Biogen, Roche, Almirall, Celgene, Forward Pharma, MedDay and Excemed.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Minimum requirements for a multidisciplinary MS Care Unit.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Organization of the fully developed integrated multidisciplinary MS Care Unit.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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