Dr. Mihaela Visoiu’s Short Bio

Dr. Mihaela Visoiu is a pediatric anesthesiologist with expertise in perioperative pain management and pediatric regional anesthesia. Most of her clinical time is spent in the operating rooms, rounding on the floor, providing patient care, and teaching and supervising student nurse anesthetists and anesthesiology residents and fellows.

Dr. Visoiu collaborates with various surgical services to implement new protocols for postoperative pain control. In her research, she develops new techniques for the placement and use of ultrasound-guided nerve blocks in children, infants, and neonates and compares those techniques with established methods for pain control.

Dr. Visoiu is interested in using clonidine as an adjunct medication for pediatric regional anesthesia and has investigated postoperative pain control outcomes and pain perception in teenagers and the transgender population. Her goals are to improve pediatric perioperative pain management, the safety of pediatric regional anesthesia, and family satisfaction with pain control. Dr. Visoiu’s research has been featured on the cover of the journal Pediatric Anesthesia three times (October 2018, March 2019, and January 2022).

Dr. Visoiu has significant experience participating in and leading multi-center clinical trials to understand the efficacy and safety of novel approaches to pain management and has extensive experience in managing large grant-funded projects. Dr. Visoiu worked with Dr. Sadhasivam as a coinvestigator in his NIH studies and will serve as principal investigator in a funded pupillometry NIH study.

Dr. Visoiu is also interested in advancing pediatric regional anesthesia education by developing ultrasound regional anesthesia simulators. In collaboration with the UPMC Department of Radiology and the Swanson School of Engineering and Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh, she developed a neonatal ultrasound epidural caudal block simulator for single injection and catheter placement (U.S. provisional patent application, due for nationalization 04/2024). This simulator was featured by Pitt Fall Med Magazine 2023 in the article” Idea to Reality.”