Speaker

Magdalena Anițescu, MD, PhD, Professor of Anaesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine is the Program Director for the multidisciplinary pain medicine fellowship and the section chief of pain management services at the University of Chicago Medicine. She completed a surgical internship at the University of Iowa and an anaesthesia residency at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Following a pain medicine fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic, she joined the faculty at the University of Chicago. She is an accomplished national and international educator, author of numerous textbook chapters and scientific papers, and a member of many professional organizations and scientific committees that review the academic curriculum for various pain medicine meetings.

As Program Director of Pain Medicine at the University of Chicago, Prof. Anițescu created novel educational experiences for the curriculum by organizing and hosting interdisciplinary and multi-institutional meetings.

She chaired many US and international meetings such as 2020 American Society of Regional Anaesthesia (ASRA) Annual Meeting and 2024 North America Neuromodulation Society (NANS) Annual Meeting and has been on scientific planning committees on pain medicine meetings constantly since 2011. She served as Director at large for the International Neuromodulation Society (INS) from 2020-2023 as well as for the NANS from 2021-2024; she is currently Member of Executive Board for NANS.

She is the Past president for Anaesthesiologists Subspecialty Program Directors in the US Association of Academic Anaesthesiologists and has served as President for the Association of Pain Medicine program directors until 2022; her efforts were directed to the pain medicine match and to the development of educational materials for pain fellows nationwide. Prof. Anițescu focuses research on improving the quality of life of patients with acute, chronic, or cancer pain through multi-modal, multi-faceted interventions. Her scholarly activity include more than 50 research papers and over 30 book chapters; she is a series editor for the Oxford University Press 10 volume Anaesthesia Subspecialties Problem Based Learning and editor for 3 US published books.

Her research focuses on improving treatment outcomes in patients suffering from cancer pain as well as efficacy of interventional pain procedures and multimodal analgesic regimen in improving functional status and survivorship in cancer pain patients; use of implantable devices (spinal cord stimulators) as well as ketamine infusions in chronic nonmalignant pain are also topics where Prof. Anițescu has significant scholarly published contributions.