Pain Medicine Program
What is the Pain Medicine Program?
Pain control is an important part of helping your child get well. We want to reduce children's discomfort simply because it feels bad, and also because pain can get in the way of healing. Inadequately controlled pain has undesirable effects on a child's metabolic, physiological and emotional conditions.
We are dedicated to improving infant, child and adolescent pain care and quality of life. A team called the Pain Medicine Team works to control pain for children who receive treatment at Children's Hospital.
The team works with children who have many types of health problems. We provide our patients relief from a variety of afflictions, including pain related to surgical procedures, cancer, sickle cell disease and other conditions.
Our team includes attending physicians and advance practice nurses.
Who needs the Pain Medicine Program?
Children have pain, just as adults do. Children may react more strongly to painful physical experiences than adults do. For children, as for all of us, pain can be scary, and it can affect their quality of life and ability to function.
Children with cancer may have any of these types of pain:
- Pain from their disease, such as bone pain if cancer is in their bones
- Pain from procedures or treatments, such as a bone marrow transplant or surgery to remove a tumor
- Pain from treatment side effects, such as mucositis (inflamed lining of the inside of the mouth and throat).
The Pain Medicine Team can help with all these types of pain. If you think your child needs help with pain, tell your child's doctor or nurse.
Also, read some tips for helping your child with pain.
Is complementary and integrative medicine available?
Children's has a Complementary and Integrative Medicine Program to help doctors and families mix, or integrate, complementary methods with conventional treatment in an informed manner. Dr. Anjana Kundu leads the program. She is an anesthesiologist who is trained in pain medicine and acupuncture.
Diagnoses or Conditions Treated
- Acute postoperative surgical pain
- Cancer pain
- Complex regional pain syndromes
- Orthopedic pain
- Sickle cell pain
We also treat other conditions not listed here.
What's special about the Pain Medicine Program at Children's?
Led by Dr. Helen Karl, our Pain Medicine Team offers many options to help control pain, some that rely on medicine and some that use other non-medication methods.
Very few other pediatric hospitals in the country offer all the services that we provide, and very few have the number of pain specialists that we have.
Learn more about treatment options.
Physician Leadership
- Helen W. Karl, MD, interim director
- Anjana Kundu, MD
- James Mooney, MD
- Sally E. Rampersad, MD
- Inge Falk Van Rooyen, MD