Sabine Kost-Byerly, M.D., Assistant Professor

For many years my primary clinical activities and research interests have been focused on the alleviation of pain in children. Whereas we have made significant progress in the prevention and safe treatment of acute pain in the peri-operative period, chronic pain in children still leaves us with many puzzles. My goal is to find answers to some of the questions: Why do some children develop chronic pain, what are the etiologies? If we can identity an at risk group, how could we prevent the development of chronic pain? How can we improve our diagnostic and therapeutic interventions? Which children will need more aggressive interventions? When is it safe to extrapolate from our experience in adults and when not and why?

Evaluating a child with chronic pain, finding possible etiologies, providing therapy in a multi-disciplinary group and then returning this child to age appropriate activities gives me great satisfaction.