Magdalena Anitescu, MD, PhD, FASA
OFFICER
Professor of Anesthesia and Pain Medicine
Section Chief, Division of Pain Management
Director, Pain Medicine Fellowship Program
Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care
University of Chicago Medical Center
Chicago, IL
Dr. Magdalena Anitescu, associate professor of anesthesia and critical care, 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 anesthesia 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, Dr. Anitescu created novel educational experiences for the curriculum by organizing and hosting interdisciplinary and multi-institutional meetings. Among them are the annual Chicago Pain Summit, the bi-annual Regional Collaborative Case Conference, and multi-disciplinary rounds. The aim is to give pain fellows access to the practices at other institutions, to exchange ideas, or to present scholarly work or clinically challenging cases.
As a council board member of the Association of Pain Medicine program directors, Dr. Anitescu’s efforts were directed to the pain medicine match and to the development of educational materials for pain fellows nationwide. Dr. Anitescu focuses research on improving the quality of life of patients with acute, chronic, or cancer pain through multi-modal, multi-faceted interventions. Her main area of research resides in outpatient infusions for the treatment of chronic pain conditions as well as efficacy of interventional pain procedures in cancer survivorship; correlation between psychiatric co-morbidities and presence of chronic pain is also a main area of research interest for Anitescu.
She is also the secretary/treasurer of the Committee for Subspecialty Program Directors in the Association of Academic Anesthesiologists where she served for 2 years and participated in the scientific planning committee of the SAAAPM. She is committed to the scope of the organization and is hoping to continue to serve as its President-Elect.
