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Dr. Zach Deutch interviews the guest editor of January's ASA Monitor, Dr. Muhammad Rafique, and his editorial co-author, Dr. M. Irfan Suleman, about pediatric regional anesthesia. Learn how our understanding of pain in neonates and small children has changed, what new techniques are making an impact, how to establish a pain center for children, and more. Recorded November 2025.
M. Irfan Suleman, MD, FAAP, FASA, completed his anesthesiology residency at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), where he was honored with the Excellence in Pediatric Anesthesia Award upon graduation. He pursued a fellowship in pediatric anesthesiology at Arkansas Children’s Hospital/UAMS, followed by a highly specialized pediatric and adult pain medicine fellowship at Harvard Medical School–affiliated institutions: Boston Children’s Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Dr. Suleman has established and led multidisciplinary pediatric pain programs, chronic pediatric pain interventional services, and pediatric regional anesthesia programs at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Kennedy Krieger Institute. He is currently the founder and chief executive officer of the Multidisciplinary Pain Center in Rockville, Maryland. He is also the founder and president of the Pediatric Pain Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and is helping develop the Pediatric Pain Rehabilitation Center known as the “Pain Resort.” Dr. Suleman is actively involved in innovative pain-related research, including the development of a novel technique for the control of acute and chronic pain in children. He is a dedicated educator and a national and international speaker on pediatric pain management.
Muhammad B. Rafique, MD, is an associate professor at Loyola University Medical Center just outside of Chicago, Illinois. His areas of clinical interest are pediatric anesthesia and pediatric cardiovascular anesthesia.
After finishing medical school in Lahore, Pakistan, Dr. Rafique travelled to the U.S. where he interned at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and then moved to Boston, Massachusetts, for his residency. He then completed a one-year fellowship in pediatric anesthesia at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, joined the faculty at the University of Oklahoma as an assistant professor, and later joined the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston as an associate professor and consultant pediatric cardiac anesthesiologist. Dr. Rafique has been married to his wife Chanda Babur for almost 16 years and they have three children aged 10, 8, and 7.
Zachary Deutch, MD, FASA, is an attending physician with US Anesthesia Partners-Florida and is a guest editor for The Central Line Podcast. Dr. Deutch serves on the editorial board for the ASA Monitor, and is the author of the bimonthly column "Ask The Expert." Dr. Deutch is also the physician review editor of the ASA Monitor Today, is a member of several ASA Committees, and is an at-large member of the ASA House of Delegates from Florida.
Dr. Deutch is a graduate of Princeton University and The George Washington University School of Medicine. His residency training was done at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, followed by a cardiothoracic anesthesia fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Date of last update: December 15, 2025
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