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Biography

Dr. Lakshmikumar Venkat Raghavan is a staff anesthesiologist at UHN – Toronto Western Hospital. Dr. Venkat Raghavan is an international leader in the anesthesia management of neurosurgical patients. Through exemplary clinical practice, innovation, research, mentorship, leadership, and knowledge translation activities, Dr. Venkat Raghavan has significantly influenced knowledge about neuroanesthesia and has led the development of practical, generalizable, clinically applicable solutions to optimize perioperative anesthesia management of patients undergoing neurosurgical procedures. His seminal work has changed clinical care worldwide in the areas of anesthesia management of patients undergoing functional neurosurgery, anesthesia for awake craniotomy and same-day discharge after craniotomy, and the development and implementation of a brain stress test to assess cerebrovascular hemodynamics. An active researcher, Dr Venkat Raghavan is a clinician-investigator at the Krembil Brain Institute. He has more than 120 peer-reviewed publications focusing on neuroscience and neuroanesthesia.

Dr. Venkat Raghavan is an excellent teacher, and he has received multiple awards for Clinical Excellence (2014-15, 2022-23) and Fellowship Teaching (2022-23).  As a program director for the Neuroanesthesia Fellowship Program from 2011 to 2023, he developed a successful neuroanesthesia fellowship program at Toronto Western Hospital which is the first anesthesia fellowship program at the University of Toronto that is accredited by the International Council of Perioperative Neuroscience Training (ICPNT).  He has trained more than 60 fellows from  Canada and the rest of the world and his former fellows have become leading clinicians and leaders in the neuroanesthesia field worldwide. In 2023, he received the Clinical Practitioner Award, from the Canadian Anesthesiologist Society (CAS). This award is bestowed on an active member of CAS who has made a significant contribution to the practice of clinical anesthesia in Canada.   Currently, Dr Venkat Raghavan is the Department of Anesthesiology & Pain Medicine Fellowship Program Director.

Biography

Dr. Ilavajady Srinivasan is a staff anesthesiologist at the Hospital for Sick Children and an associate professor (effective July 1, 2024) at the University of Toronto in the Department of Anesthesia and Pain Medicine. He completed his Bachelor in Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) from the Thanjavur Medical College and his MD in Anesthesiology from the All India Institute for Medical Science in New Delhi, India.

Dr. Srinivasan's professional endeavours are dedicated to advancing fellowship education in pediatric anesthesia. He is the co-chair of the Canadian Pediatric Anesthesia Society Education Committee and has spearheaded efforts that led to the recognition of pediatric anesthesiology as a subspecialty Area of Focused Competence (AFC) at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. This milestone marks the first anesthesia sub-specialty to achieve such recognition at the Royal College.

He also serves as the pediatric anesthesia section leader in a prominent Facebook anesthesiologist community, which, to date, has over 32,000 members. He uses this platform to champion educational innovation, the delivery of pediatric anesthesia education, and exemplary clinical practice. Through this group, he has curated educational content, moderated discussions, and presented 11 essential pediatric anesthesia webinars on 32 topics, which have garnered significant attention in low and middle-income countries, with some exceeding 4,000 views.

Since 2014, he has been director of the Pediatric Anesthesia Fellowship Program at the Hospital for Sick Children, where he has supervised the training of over 110 candidates. Under his stewardship, the fellowship programs have undergone significant enhancements, including transitioning from lecture-based to problem-based discussions for formal education delivery, integrating competency-based medical education via entrustable professional activity (EPA)-based assessments, enhancing pediatric anesthesia training evaluation in other Canadian centres, and integrating simulation and formal mentorship into the fellowship program. Additionally, he has formalized and strengthened the fellowship application and selection process in alignment with the Best Practices in Application and Selection 2018 guidelines of the University of Toronto. As fellowship director, he also provides crucial mentorship to the fellows in the Sick Kids Pediatric Anesthesia Fellowship Program, many of whom have made substantial contributions to pediatric anesthesia programs worldwide.

Biography

Dr. Deepa Kattail is a nationally recognized leader in pediatric pain medicine and pediatric anesthesiology. She holds an appointment as staff anesthesiologist and pain physician at The Hospital for Sick Children. Dr. Kattail has established herself as a leader in pediatric pain medicine through her professional innovations, creative excellence, and dissemination of knowledge for professional development.

She is an active member of the Society for Pediatric Pain Medicine where she is currently an executive board member and chair of the communications committee. She was honoured to serve as program chair for the Society for Pediatric Pain Medicine’s annual meeting in 2021. Dr. Kattail is involved in various organizations advocating for improvements in pain care at the national and provincial levels, as pediatric co-chair of the Ontario Chronic Pain network, affiliated with Ontario’s Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and a member of the National Advisory Committee for Pain Canada. She is an inaugural board member of Pain Ontario, a newly launched non-profit organization representing patients living with pain and healthcare professionals involved in treating pain, to create a collaborative voice at the provincial level.

Dr. Kattail is also actively involved in dissemination of knowledge through social media and open access internet portals including substantial contributions to www.SolvingPain.ca, associate editor for the Pain Medicine section of www.OpenAnesthesia.org and editor of www.Baby-Blocks.com.  In 2022, she served as a topic reviewer for development of the Opioid Curriculum for the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada, to create a virtual based learning modules for all medical students in the country, in response a gap in delivery of knowledge related to pain management in undergraduate medical education.

As a clinician devoted to alleviating pain in children, she is passionate about pediatric regional anesthesia as a gold standard for pain management in children and adolescents. She founded the pediatric regional anesthesia service during her early years as faculty at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. She also regularly serves as faculty for continuing medical education workshops devoted to the practice of pediatric regional anesthesia at an international level.  For her contributions to pediatric pain medicine, she was recently honoured as a 2023 fellow of The May Day Pain & Society fellowship.

Biography

Dr. Neil Goldenberg is a staff anesthetist at The Hospital for Sick Children, and Scientist in the Cell Biology Program at the SickKids Research Institute. Dr. Goldenberg is the inaugural John Alchin and Hal Marryatt Early Career Professor in Anesthesia and Pain Medicine at the University of Toronto. Dr. Goldenberg’s lab studies the pathogenesis of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). This deadly disease, characterized by elevated pulmonary vascular resistance, right-sided heart failure, and eventually, death, develops as a result of remodeling of the pulmonary vasculature. While the characteristics of the diseased vessels have long been described, the precise mechanisms leading to vascular remodeling remain incompletely understood. Over the past 1-2 decades, the importance of inflammation and dysregulation of the immune system in this process has come to the fore. Our research seeks to define the contributions of the innate immune system and inflammatory cell death to the pathogenesis of PAH. Using in vitro methods, animal models, and PAH patient-derived samples, we study immunity in PAH, as well as immunomodulatory therapies for this devastating disease. Our work has been published in high impact journals such as Nature Communications, eLife, and Nature, and has been cited more than 1300 times.