The PAAD's pain team

Myron Yaster MD

We have approximately 25 members on the PAAD’s executive council who serve as our writers, reviewers, and editors. I thought it was high time that I introduce them to you and have asked them to submit a head shot photo and short bio. I will introduce all of them to you over the next few weeks.

Rita Agarwal MD is a Clinical Professor of Anesthesiology, at Stanford, Past President and a founding member of the Society for Pediatric Pain Medicine, Past Chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Section on Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine and former member of the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia Board of Directors. She is a member of the ABA  Pediatric Anesthesiology Committee and an ABA  Basic Exam Question Editor, AAP Committee on Substance Use Prevention, the AAP Clinical Guideline Taskforce on Opioid Prescription, and the American Medical Association Taskforce on Substance Use Prevention and Pain Medicine. Her passion is for education, appropriate pain management and advocacy for safer dental anesthesia, opioid stewardship, and substance use prevention. Her other academic  interests include neuroanesthesia, mentorship, sponsorship, diversity and women’s issues in medicine and faculty development.

Elliot Krane was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Tucson, Arizona. He is a graduate of Reed College in Portland, Oregon and the University of Arizona School of Medicine. During a LOA from medical school, he spent 18 months at the Physiological Laboratory, University of Cambridge under the mentorship of Peter Nathanielsz, MD, PhD, introducing the laboratory to computerized data recovery and Fourier analysis of EEG for fetal EEG analysis. After graduation from the UofA he completed residencies in pediatrics and anesthesiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and fellowship training in pediatric anesthesiology and critical care at Boston Children's Hospital.

From 1983 - 1994 he was a faculty member at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital. There he and his colleague Donald C. Tyler, MD started one of the first pain clinics for children in the U.S. and in 1988 he and Tyler organized the 1st International Symposium on Pediatric Pain. In 1994 he was appointed Professor and Chief of Pediatric Anesthesiology and Pain Management at Stanford University. He remained the Chief until 2003, at which time he stepped down but continuing as the Chief of Pediatric Pain Management.

Elliot holds board certification in Pediatrics, Anesthesiology, Pediatric Anesthesiology, Critical Care Medicine, and Pain Management, is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and a member of the Association of University Anesthesiologists. He has received the Physician’s Recognition Award in both Anesthesiology and Pediatric Critical from the American Medical Association, the Best 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, the Ellis N. Cohen Achievement Award from the Department of Anesthesiology of Stanford University, and the Distinguished Career Award from the Pediatric Pain Group of the International Association for the Study of Pain.

Elliot retired in the spring of 2023, and is now Stanford Emeritus Professor. He lives in Menlo Park with his wife Maria Amundson, a Stanford Distinguished Careers Fellow, and their Australian Terrier Barney.

Lynne Maxwell, MD, FAAP was a pediatric anesthesiologist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and is Emeritus Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Maxwell retired from clinical work in 2021 but continues to care for pediatric patients during surgical missions in Guatemala. Dr. Maxwell completed pediatric and anesthesiology residencies at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she was a member of the pediatric anesthesia faculty for 27 years before moving to The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in 2002. Dr. Maxwell served six years both as a member of the executive committee of the AAP Section on Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, six years as an elected member of the AAP Committee on Drugs (COD) and six years as a member of the executive committee of the AAP Section on Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Dr. Maxwell participated in the FDA NICHD neonatal drug initiative, pain subgroup, which identified barriers to drug safety and efficacy studies in the neonatal population and drug categories with specific needs for study in newborns. Her research has included efficacy and pharmacokinetic studies of analgesics in infants and children as well as issues of neonatal pain assessment and management. She is a recipient of the Robert M. Smith Award for outstanding contributions to the field of Pediatric Anesthesiology by the AAP Section on Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine. She was a consultant to the Pediatric Section editor of Anesthesia and Analgesia, and a associate editor for Pediatric Anesthesia. She is currently a member of the editorial board of Pediatric Anesthesia Article of the Day.