News
Dr Khaled Masaud at the IPS Annual Scientific Meeting
The Irish Pain Society held a very successful virtual Annual Scientific Meeting on Saturday the 10th of September, 2020. Dr Khaled Masaud, presenting research conducted on determinants of pain after breast surgery at Cork University Hospital, was honoured to receive both the inaugural Raftery Medal 2020 for best poster submitted by a doctor in training and the Irish Pain Research Network (IPRN) Award for original research.
The IPRN award was made based on Dr Masaud’s demonstration that abundance of specific organisms (such as F. Prausnitzii) in the gut microbiome is associated with incidence of acute and persistent pain after breast surgery. This opens up a new set of analgesic targets which might be activated using pre/probiotics or diet.
Dr Masaud was awarded the Raftery Medal based on his demonstration that trait anxiety (evaluated preoperatively) was associated with analgesic consumption in the early postoperative period.
The work presented will form part of a thesis which he plans to submit for MD by research to UCC later this year. His supervisors are Professor George Shorten, UCC and Dr Siobhain O’Mahony, APC Microbiome Ireland.