UK

Dr. Arun Bhaskar graduated from the University of Kerala medical school, India. He subsequently completed his specialist training at the north west deanery, UK in 2006 and started his consultant career at the Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester. In addition to Royal College fellowships in anaesthesia, pain medicine and intensive care, he also has a fellowship in interventional pain practice.
Dr Bhaskar has special interests in complex pain, including neuropathic pain, cancer pain, visceral and pelvic pain, pain interventions and neuromodulation.

Dr. Bhaskar also has a specific interest in opioid management in complicated cancer pain, as well as opioid dependence and its management in the pain patient population. He has been involved with several clinical trials in cancer pain and neuropathic pain in cancer including chemotherapy-induced neuropathy. He has been involved in developing novel techniques for interventional treatment of pain including intractable cancer pain.

Dr. Bhaskar is on the faculty of many courses, including the European Pain School. He is an examiner for the European Diploma in pain medicine and also the FIPP examination for the World Institute of Pain. He writes a regular column in the European Pain News and serves as section editor for the Journal of Observational Pain Medicine. He is an elected member of the Council of the British Pain Society and is also the executive liaison for the Society’s interventional pain special interest group (SIG), neuropathic pain SIG and cancer pain committee. He also chairs the communications committee.

Dr. Bhaskar is the honorary secretary of the Neuromodulation Society of the UK and Ireland (NSUKI). He is also the co-chair of the neuromodulation for pain guidelines committee of the British Pain Society and NSUKI. He is the present chairman of the UK section of the World Institute of Pain. Dr. Bhaskar advises the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) on interventional procedures, cancer pain and was a co-opted member of the guideline development group for care of the dying.

Dr. Bhaskar was a contributing author towards the British Pain Society’s ‘cancer pain management’ document in 2010 and is currently the co-chair of the committee for the cancer pain management guidelines of the British Pain Society. He is also a member of the European Pain Federation Task Force on cancer pain management. Dr. Bhaskar is the co-chair for the OPEN Consensus group for opioid analgesic dependency. He is also the immediate past-chair of the Northwest Pain Clinicians, UK, and was a member of the steering group of the Northern England Pain Society. Dr Bhaskar was also part of the scientific committee for European Pain Federation, EFIC 2017 and is also the co-chair of the International Meeting of the Spinal Interventional Society, London 2018 and president-elect of the British Pain Society.