Some children recover quickly from surgery while others may develop long lasting pain and disability. Research shows there are many factors that may play a role in how a child recovers from surgery, genetic or heritable factors being among those. Besides the gene structure, the response of these genes to other environmental and psychosocial factors may play a big role in the generation and propagation of pain. My guest's research examines what those factors are and how they may be affecting the behavior of the genes responsible for her patients' pain experiences. Find out what she discovered.

Takeaways in This Episode

• How she became interested in this research and created her Pediatric Pain PAL lab.
• What constitutes Chronic Post-surgical Pain (CPSP), how common is it among children (and adults) and why that might be relevant to us.
• Psychosocial and perioperative factors that predict CPSP
• Why the findings from Systematic reviews may be limited in their findings about ability to predict or impact CPSP.
• Can you modify the genetic factors involved in pain experience after surgery and how.
• Things that healthcare professionals do to change the response of the genes associated with pain, before during and after surgery.
• CPSP related expenses, cost-effectiveness of genetic testing and when it should be considered.
• Applicability of the epigenetics in chronic pain conditions

Links

Vidya Chidambaran, MD

Peds pain PAL

Publications

Epigenetics in Migraine