Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Latvia was recently nominated Europe’s best-kept secret by some international media (figures 1 and 2). I would like to disclose some secrets of the Latvian medical system, not known to the rest of the world, with a special emphasis on neurology. To understand our medical system properly, it is useful to have some historical background. Latvia was independent before World War II, with its own non-Slavonic language. Our country chose to stay neutral during the War but this did not prevent it from being occupied and forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union; the intellectual elite were deported to concentration camps in Siberia and this continued long after the War ended. The 50-year oppression of the Soviet regime has left a permanent scar on our culture, in both daily life and medicine. I was 9 years of age when Latvia regained its independence in 1991 (figure 3).
Flag of Latvia.
Location of Latvia in Europe.
Freedom monument.
I started neurology training 15 years later. I remember meeting some very special inpatients whose problems seem mainly psychogenic from today's perspective. For example, a middle-aged woman with a garish hair bun, pink plush bathrobe and pink slippers carrying a cotton towel in her hand, slowly walking through the corridor towards one of the most advanced therapeutic procedure, a hyperbaric oxygenation session, something believed to improve the course of the vast majority of neurological diseases as well as health in general. Elderly colleagues explained that in Soviet times people came into hospital a couple of times a year to improve health. Indeed, it was common for my patients concerned about their health to ask their family doctor for a referral to hospital in order to undergo various health-improving physical procedures …
Footnotes
-
Competing interests None.
-
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed. This article was reviewed by Tom Hughes, Cardiff, UK.
Linked Articles
- Editors' choice
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Pragmatic approach to neuraxial anesthesia in obstetric patients with disorders of the vertebral column, spinal cord and neuromuscular system
- Evidence-based consensus guidelines on patient selection and trial stimulation for spinal cord stimulation therapy for chronic non-cancer pain
- Physical functioning following spinal cord stimulation: a systematic review and meta-analysis
- Trends in spinal cord stimulation utilization: change, growth and implications for the future
- Clinical features of double infection with tick-borne encephalitis and Lyme borreliosis transmitted by tick bite
- Role of patient selection and trial stimulation for spinal cord stimulation therapy for chronic non-cancer pain: a comprehensive narrative review
- 001 Cost effectiveness of spinal cord stimulation in chronic low back pain
- Explant rates of electrical neuromodulation devices in 1177 patients in a single center over an 11-year period
- sPinal coRd stimulatiOn coMpared with lumbar InStrumEntation for low back pain after previous lumbar decompression (PROMISE): a prospective multicentre RCT
- Prevalence of smoking in adults with spinal cord stimulators: a systematic review and meta-analysis