Pain Management

Konstantinos D. Sarantopoulos, MD, PhD, DEAA
Professor and Chief, Division of Pain Management Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative Medicine and Pain Management, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida.

Dr. Sarantopoulos serves as Professor and Chief of the Division of Pain Management, and as Pain Medicine Fellowship Program Director at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine since August 2010. He has earned an MD and a PhD degree from the Medical School of the National and Capodistrian University of Athens, Greece, and a MS degree from the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He has trained as an Anesthesiologist and as a Pain Medicine Specialist at the Medical College of Wisconsin, in Milwaukee, WI, wherein he also held faculty appointments in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Pharmacology & Toxicology. He has conducted NIH-funded research on the mechanisms of neuropathic pain and neuronal ion-channels as targets for analgesia and neuroprotection.

Dr. Sarantopoulos is a clinician-scientist, an experienced board-certified pain specialist recognized by several clinical awards, including "Best Doctors in America®" since 2009, as well as by international research awards. His main clinical focus is interventional pain medicine in the context of an interdisciplinary, bio-psycho-social approach. Dr Sarantopoulos' basic research focuses in the pathophysiology and pharmacology of peripheral neuropathic pain, and his clinical research in the transition from acute to chronic pain after surgery for cancer. Dr. Sarantopoulos has developed novel techniques in studying ion channels in neurons, and he continues his research on neuronal potassium channels as pharmacological targets for neuroprotection and for analgesia. Specifically, for the past eight years, Dr. Sarantopoulos has been characterizing ATP-sensitive potassium channels in peripheral sensory neurons, and he is investigating their role in pain following peripheral nerve injury. He has also developed clinical strategies limiting the transition from acute to chronic pain after surgery for cancer. Dr Sarantopoulos' work has resulted in several peer-reviewed articles in the areas of clinical and experimental neuropathic pain, book chapters and international awards.

To date, Dr. Sarantopoulos has authored and co-authored more than 60 articles in scientific journals and books, and has as served as reviewer and/or associate editor in several biomedical journals, as well as in several committees. He has been lecturing on several topics pertinent to the management of acute and chronic pain in several national and international meetings.

Esther M. Benedetti, MD, FIPP
Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Anesthesia Director, Interventional Pain Management, Department of Anesthesia Director, Resident Pain Medicine Rotation, Department of Anesthesia .

Dr. Esther M. Benedetti obtained her medical degree at the Escuela de Medicina Jose Maria Vargas and her anesthesia training at the Hospital Domingo Luciani (Universidad Central de Venezuela) in Caracas, Venezuela. In the year 2003, she acquired her Pain Medicine fellowship training at the University of Vermont. She returned to Venezuela where she worked as a chronic pain specialist at the Instituto de Clinicas y Urologia Tamanaco and the Centro Medico Docente La Trinidad. She received certification by the World Institute of Pain as a Fellow of Interventional Pain Practice. In the year 2007, she emigrated to the US and worked at the University of Iowa for nearly a decade. She recently moved to Florida and started working both at the Miami VA Medical Center and the University of Miami where she currently serves as an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesia.

*Tentative course schedule, actual class times may differ.