Anesthesia

Who we are

The anesthesiologists at Children’s Hospital Boston specialize in the care of children of all ages—from newborn to teenagers—during surgery. Our goal is to make the hospital experience as pleasant as we can: to help manage your child’s anxiety before surgery, as well as his or her pain after surgery—plus support critical bodily functions and minimize the risks associated with surgery.

The Anesthesia Department at Children’s includes:

• The Pediatric Pain Rehabilitation Center: an intensive rehabilitation program that serves the needs of children and adolescents with chronic musculoskeletal and neuropathic pain
   
• Sedation Services: sedation services for children who must undergo painful or scary procedures
   
• Medical Acupuncture Service: acute and chronic pain management through acupuncture
   
• Cardiac Anesthesia Services: anesthesia and pain management for cardiac (heart), thoracic (lungs) or vascular (blood vessels) surgeries
   
• Pain Treatment Services: treatment and support for acute and chronic pain, mostly post-operative

Our Expertise

Physicians at Children’s continually re-examine the standard methods of anesthesiology and work to develop better, more reliable practices for protecting heart, lung and brain function and blood circulation during anesthesia. Our record of innovation and publication has earned us top recognition.

• Anesthesia Department faculty are currently researching how to prevent post-operative nausea and vomiting.
• In the Pain Treatment research laboratory, investigators are looking into the development of timed-release systems for local anesthetics that can provide prolonged analgesia for days or weeks following injection or implantation.
• Children’s Pain Treatment Services has become a referral center for children with many types of neuropathic pain, but especially limb pain associated with signs of abnormal circulation, or reflex sympathetic dystrophy. The chief of the division, Charles Berde, MD, has received several awards and honors for his pioneering work in pediatric pain relief, including the 2003 Scientific Achievement Award of the Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome Association. He was also profiled as one of Time Magazine's “Heroes in Medicine” in 1997.
• Pain Treatment Services is the most clinically active pediatric pain program in the world.
• The Pediatric Pain Rehabilitation Center is the most comprehensive stand-alone, day hospital program of its kind in the United States, offering intensive multidisciplinary rehabilitation to children and adolescents who have not responded to traditional outpatient treatment.