Pain Treatment Services

Who we are

Pain Treatment Services at Children’s Hospital Boston was the first multidisciplinary program in the world to provide treatment and support for acute and chronic pain in children and young adults. Since our founding in 1986, we have remained the most clinically active program of our kind in the world.

We provide care for more than 2,000 patients each year, most of whom are post-operative. Children with cancer, sickle cell disease, hemophilia, AIDS, cystic fibrosis and other medical diseases form a challenging but rewarding group of patients.

Our program, offered through the Department of Anesthesia, includes:

• Acute Pain Treatment Service: a consultative service to help manage your child’s pain while he or she is in the hospital.
• Chronic Pain Management Clinic: an outpatient clinic that treats children and adolescents who have a variety of pain problems, including headaches, reflex sympathetic dystrophy, fibromyalgia, lower back pain and patellofemoral syndrome.

A team approach to care

In addition to receiving care by an anesthesiologist, all patients are evaluated by a psychologist who specializes in pain management through behavior medicine, and by a physical therapist.

 Patient-controlled analgesia is administered to about half of our patients, and epidural anesthesia to another quarter. The remainder receive a variety of treatments, depending on their individual factors.