In This Section      
Home > Neurology and Neurosurgery > Centers & Clinics > Neurosurgery Pain Research Institute

Neurosurgery Pain Research Institute

The Neurosurgery Pain Institute team

The Neurosurgery Pain Research Institute was created to investigate controlling, preventing and eliminating neurosurgically related pain. There is a tremendous need to establish a scientific rationale for improving the understanding of chronic pain, and devising new approaches to alleviating and preventing it.

This Institute will perform basic scientific and clinical research into the mechanisms of different human chronic pain states as a basis for rational treatment of chronic pain. Our research is focused on neurological diseases that trigger pain and pain as a result of neurosurgical procedures.

$75 Million in Gifts Creates Neurosurgery Pain Research Center at Hopkins

More than 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain, some like patient Bob Salathe who had extreme neuropathic pain. Transformational gifts from an anonymous couple established the Johns Hopkins Neurosurgery Pain Research Institute and two named professorships, held by Allan Belzberg, MD, FRCSC – who performed the DREZ surgery which alleviated Salathe’s pain – and by Michael Caterina, MD, PhD, whose lab focuses on sentry neurons in the skin and other tissues that trigger the sensation of pain.

In the News: Michael Caterina, M.D., along with Thomas J. Smith, M.D. and their colleagues, received a significant gift from the Lerner Family Fund for Pain Research to further their research. Read more.

Discovering How Neuromodulation Relieves Pain: "Pain affects patients in every department of Johns Hopkins Medicine," Michael Caterina, M.D., says. The Lerner Family Fund will unite Johns Hopkins basic scientists and clinical researchers to better understand how neuromodulation, along with other pain management techniques, works — and how it could provide an alternative to opioid medications for pain sufferers.

Conquering Pain | A 40-Year Journey

A 1976 car crash left Ohio resident David Kiessling suffering from devastating nerve damage and searing pain. An online search led him to neurosurgeon Allan Belzberg and the Neurosurgery Pain Research Institute, where Kiessling’s journey of recovery is helping researchers better understand pain.

Explore more

Contact us

To learn more about research being conducted at the Neurosurgery Pain Research Institute at Johns Hopkins, email us.

The Neuroscience of Pain

Sponsored by BrainFacts.org in partnership with the American Brain Coalition, this free webinar explores the science behind acute and chronic pain. Neuroscientists, clinicians and patient advocates discuss the nervous system mechanisms that underlie pain, approaches to developing new pain therapies, the human and economic impact of pain and the federal investment in pain research.

Show me more...
I want to...