• Professor in Experimental Pain Research
• Laboratory of Experimental Anesthesiology and Pain Research
• Dept. Anesthesiology and Pain Therapy.
With a background in Neurobiology I am head of Research of Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Management at the Academic Hospital Maastricht. As of March 1 2017 I am Editor in Chief of Pain Practice. The experimental research at the Laboratory Experimental Pain (University of Maastricht) addresses both effectiveness of treatment of pain and the development of clinical diagnostics, innovative interventional pain management techniques and innovative drug delivery systems for pain medication.
As the research is translational all laboratory experiments are directly linked to ongoing clinical studies. Research on modulation of chronic pain deals with understanding of interventional treatment approaches like spinal cord stimulation (SCS) , Dorsal Root Ganglion Stimulation (DRG-SCS) and (pulsed) radiofrequency (PRF) in various neuropathic syndromes like CRPS, diabetic poly-neuropathy and small fiber neuropathy.
Modulation of chronic pain is also investigated based on genetic screening) GWAS related to psychological predictors of chronification of pain.
Anatomical, elctrophysiological and bio-molecular research focusses at the understanding of the central sensitization process in the spinal pain gate. The laboratory has extensive expertise in experimental pain models (rodents), in behavioral assessment (reflex and operant tests) of experimental pain and in (quantitative) immune-histochemical techniques as well as fMRI.Standard biochemical and molecular genetic analysis techniques are available. At present the laboratory is acknowledged as a national and international reference site on neuromodulation (SCS and PRF) in pain research and research is financially supported by Medtronic, Boston Scientific and St.Jude/Spinal Modulation.
