Mihaela Visoiu, MD

Dr. Mihaela Visoiu a pediatric anesthesiologist with expertise in perioperative pain management and 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.

She is interested in the use of clonidine as an adjunct medication for pediatric regional anesthesia and has participated in several funded prospective studies investigating the safety and efficacy of various analgesics. Dr. Visoiu has investigated postoperative pain control outcomes and pain perception in teenagers and in 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 is also interested in advancing pediatric regional anesthesia education by developing ultrasound regional anesthesia simulators. In collaboration with UPMC and the Swanson School of Engineering and Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh, she developed a pediatric ultrasound epidural caudal block simulator for single injection and catheter placement (patent pending - U.S. provisional patent application and international PCT patent application have been filled). 

Dr. Visoiu’s research has been featured on the cover of the journal Pediatric Anesthesia three times (October 2018, March 2019, and January 2022).

Q and A with Dr. Mihaela Visoiu, Nexus, Fall 2022 (PDF)

Ideas to Reality, PittMed Magazine, Fall 2023