Department of Anesthesiology
The Department of Anesthesiology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center provides anesthesia, sedation, pain management, organ protection and life support services related to surgery, radiology and other healthcare for premature infants to young adults. Our staff also educates other professionals interested in the specialty and conducts research to discover the scientific underpinning of anesthesiology and to improve the outcome of our patients.
Anesthesiologist-in-Chief C. Dean Kurth, MD, leads a department of more than 50 anesthesiologists who hold faculty appointments in anesthesiology and pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Medicine. We perform more than 38,000 anesthetics and 9,000 pain and palliative care consultations a year at Cincinnati Children’s.
Each of the department’s three divisions − Anesthesia, Pain Management and Neurobiology − is composed of uniquely qualified staff. Anesthesia is often called a “strange sleep,” a condition in which sensation (pain), memory and consciousness are absent while vital signs are present. After a complete evaluation, the anesthesiologist administers medications and provides life support to make the surgery, radiological and medical procedure safe and recovery as comfortable as possible. For post-surgical or other types of severe pain, the pain management physician diagnoses and prescribes appropriate treatments to relieve the pain. For spine and neurosurgery, the neurophysiologist uses special equipment to monitor the brain, spinal cord and nerves to prevent injury during surgery.
Residents in the UC College of Medicine acquire their pediatric anesthesia training at Cincinnati Children’s. Our pediatric anesthesia fellowship is a one-year training program that is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. The department also offers advanced fellowships (an additional one to two years of training) in areas such as pain management, regional anesthesia, neuroanesthesia, cardiac anesthesia, palliative care, research and quality improvement.
Our Pediatric Anesthesiology Research Center is the only research center in the world dedicated to advancing pediatric anesthesiology.
U.S. News & World Report has ranked Cincinnati Children’s the third best children’s hospital in the nation in general pediatrics in its 2011 “America’s Best Children’s Hospitals” ranking. The magazine also ranks the University of Cincinnati No. 3 on its list of best medical schools for pediatrics.
