“In 1986, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Section on Anesthesiology (SOA) created the Robert M. Smith Award in honor of the first Chair of the AAP Committee on Anesthesia. Dr. Smith was an influential and innovative pediatric anesthesiologist who felt it was his mission to improve techniques and equipment for pediatric patients undergoing surgery. The prestigious Robert M. Smith Award is presented annually to honor an individual who is a Fellow of the AAP (FAAP) who has made outstanding contributions to the field of pediatric anesthesiology. These are truly remarkable individuals who have made many important advances to our subspecialty.“1
The winner of this year’s Smith award is one of my closest friends in the profession, Dr. Elliot J. Krane, who recently retired as Professor of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine (Pediatric Anesthesia) at the Stanford University Medical Center, and currently has Emeritus status. The award will be presented at the annual meetings of the Society for Pediatric Pain Management and the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia-American Academy of Pediatrics to be held at the Anaheim Marriott hotel in Anaheim California April 11-14. Myron Yaster MD
A brief biography from the Stanford University website (https://profiles.stanford.edu/elliot-krane) accessed 01/06/2024:
“Dr. Krane was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Tucson, the son of a watchmaker and a bookkeeper. He attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon (the Dana Scholarship for Excellence in Humanities, Phi Beta Kappa) and the University of Arizona (MD, Alpha Omega Alpha). He also worked during med school for 13 months in the Physiological Laboratory at Cambridge University under the mentorship of Peter Nathanielsz, MD, PhD, introducing the laboratory to computerized data recovery and Fourier analysis of EEG for fetal EEG measurement. He trained in pediatrics and anesthesiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and completed a fellowship in pediatric anesthesiology and critical care at Boston Children's Hospital.
From 1983 until 1994 he was on the faculty at the University of Washington and the staff of Seattle Children's Hospital practicing OR anesthesiology, pediatric critical care medicine and pain medicine. Here he started one of the first pain centers for children in North America.
In 1994 he joined the faculty at Stanford University School of Medicine as the Chief of Pediatric Anesthesiology and Professor. In 2003, he resigned as the anesthesiology chief but continued as the Chief of Pain Management. He holds board certification in Pediatrics, Anesthesiology, Pediatric Anesthesiology, Critical Care Medicine, and Pain Management, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. He retired in May, 2023 and now has emeritus status.
Elliot Krane has received the Physician’s Recognition Award in both Anesthesiology and Pediatric Critical from the American Medical Association, the Poster Award from the Vienna International Congress on Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care, the Jeffrey Lawson Award for Advocacy in Children’s Pain Relief from the American Pain Society (APS), the Ellis N. Cohen Achievement Award from the Stanford University Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, and the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) Distinguished Career Award in Pediatric Pain. He has also been the recipient of grants from the Mayday Fund, the NIH, the American Medical Association, the Washington State Society of Anesthesiologists, the Diabetes Research and Education Foundation, and the American Society of Anesthesiologists as well as from pharmaceutical companies for new drug development for the treatment of pediatric pain.”
Finally, I’ve asked Elliot to join the executive council of the PAAD and he will become our principal reviewer of chronic pain related articles. He will join Dr. Rita Agarwal and me as our primary pain article reviewers. Congratulations and mazel tov to Elliot and his family! Myron Yaster MD
PS: I thought it might be of great interest to many of you to know who else has previously won the Smith award. Listed below are the previous award winners. Special thanks to Drs. Constance Houck and Rita Agarwal who helped me put this list together.
References
1. Agarwal R, Riefe J, Houck CS. Fifty years of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Anesthesiology: a history of our specialty. Paediatric anaesthesia 2017;27(6):560-570. (In eng). DOI: 10.1111/pan.13121.
Previous Smith award winners
Year Name
1986 Robert M. Smith
1987 William O. McQuiston
1988 A. W. Conn
1989
1990 Herbert Rackow and Ernest Salanitre
1991
1992 Joseph Marcy
1993 Gordon (Jack) Jackson-Rees
1994 Margery Van Norden Deming
1995 Leonard Bachman
1996 John J. Downes
1997 C. Ronald Stephen
1998 John F. Ryan
1999 George A. Gregory
2000
2001 David Steward
2002 Dolly Hansen
2003 Etsuro K. Motoyama
2004 Theodore Striker
2005
2006 Alvin Hackel
2007 Josephine (Pina) Templeton
2008 Frederic Berry
2009 David Ryan Cook
2010 Juan Gutierrez-Mazzora
2011 Charles Cote'
2012 Nishan Goudsouzian
2013 J. Christian Abajian
2014 Raafat Hannallah
2015 Charles Lockhart
2016 Lynne G. Maxwell
2017 Peter Davis
2018 Robert Friesen
2019 Nancy Glass
2020 Jayant K. Desphpande
2021 Corrie T. M. Anderson
2022 Shoba Malviya
2023 Navil Sethna
2024 Elliot J. Krane