Robert S. Griffin, MD, PhD

Dr. Robert Griffin specializes in treating patients with back pain, neck pain, and other chronic pain disorders. As the Director of the Ambulatory Pain Medicine Program at Hospital for Special Surgery, he believes in a strong multidisciplinary approach to chronic pain problems. He designs a personalized treatment plan for each of his patients that may incorporate diagnostic testing, medications, minimally invasive interventional approaches, and rehabilitative strategies in an effort to ameliorate patient suffering and optimize functional performance.

Dr. Griffin earned his MD and PhD from Harvard Medical School. He received the prestigious Medical Scientist Training Program award from the National Institutes of Health and Harvard Medical School. He conducted his doctoral research at Harvard on the genetic mechanisms of pain sensitization. Dr. Griffin has published the results of his research on pain in leading scientific and biomedical journals, including Nature Medicine, Cell, the Journal of Neuroscience, and Brain.

Dr. Griffin completed his postgraduate medical training at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, including an internship in internal medicine, residency in anesthesiology, and fellowship in pain medicine. He was recognized as a Research Resident Scholar by the Foundation for Anesthesia Research and received the Partners in Excellence Award for his excellent care of patients.

Appointments

Director, Ambulatory Pain Medicine Program, Hospital for Special Surgery
Assistant Attending Anesthesiologist, Hospital for Special Surgery
Clinical Instructor, Anesthesiology, Weill Cornell Medical College

Specialty

Anesthesiology
Pain Medicine

Special Expertise

Degenerative disc disease and disc herniation
Lumbar and cervical radiculopathy
Spinal stenosis
Other types of low back pain and neck pain
Chronic pain after surgery
Complex regional pain syndrome
Nerve injury related pain

Awards

Phi Beta Kappa
Sigma Xi
Medical Scientist Training Program grant by Harvard Medical School/ NIH
Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research Resident Scholar    

Affiliations

American Society of Anesthesiologists

Procedures

Diagnostic and therapeutic spinal injections
Epidural steroid injections
Facet injections
Radiofrequency ablation
Percutaneous spinal cord stimulator placement

Education

Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 2007

Internship

Internal Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, 2008

Residency

Anesthesiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, 2011

Fellowship

Pain Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, 2012

Certification

Board certified in Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine

State Licensure

New York  

Selected Publications

Costigan M*, Belfer I*, Griffin RS*, Barrett LB, Coppola G, Wu T, Kiselycznk C, Poddar M, Lu Y, Diatchenko L, Smith S, Cobos EJ, Zaykin D, Allchorne A, Shen PH,  Nikolajsen L, Karppinen J, Mannikko M, Kelempisoti A, Goldman D, Maixner W, Geschwind DH, Max MB, Seltzer Z, Woolf CJ (2010) Multiple chronic pain states are associated with a common amino acid changing allele in KCNS1. Brain 133(9) 2519-2527.
* Denotes equal contribution

Scholz J, Mannion RJ, Hord DE, Griffin RS, Rawal B, Zheng H, Scoffings D, Phillips A, Guo J, Laing RJ, Abdi S, Decosterd I, Woolf CJ (2009) A novel tool for the assessment of pain: validation in low back pain. PLos Med 6(4): e1000047.

Griffin RS, Costigan M, Brenner GJ, Ma CH, Scholz J, Moss A, Allchorne AJ, Stahl GL, Woolf CJ (2007) Complement induction in spinal cord microglia results in anaphlatoxin C5a-mediated pain hypersensitivity. J. Neurosci 27: 8699-8708.

Mills CD, Allchorne AJ, Griffin RS, Woolf CJ, Costigan M (2007) GDNF selectively promotes regeneration of injury-primed sensory neurons in the lesioned spinal cord. Mol Cell Neurosci 36: 185-194

Tegeder I, Costigan M, Griffin RS, Abele A, Belfer I, Schmidt H, Ehnert C, Nejm J, Marian C, Scholz J, Wu T, Allchorne A, Diatchenko L, Bihnstok AM, Goldman D, Adolph J, Sama S, Atlas SJ, Carlezon WA, Parsegian A, Lotsch J, Fillingim RB, Maixner W, Geisslinger G, Max MB, Woolf CJ. (2006) GTP cyclohydrolase and tetrahydrobiopterin regulate pain sensitivity and persistence. Nature Medicine 12: 1269-1277.

Griffin RS (2005) An Epac-dependent pain pathway. J Neurosci. 25: 8113-8114.

Griffin RS, Mills CD, Costigan M, Woolf CJ (2003) Exploiting microarrays to reveal differential gene expression in the nervous system. Genome Biol. 4: 105.

Costigan M, Befort K, Karchewski L, Griffin RS, D’Urso D, Allchorne A, Sitarski J, Mannion JW, Pratt RE, Woolf CJ (2002) Replicate high-density oligonucleotide microarrays reveal hundreds of regulated genes in the dorsal root ganglion after peripheral nerve injury. BMC Neurosci. 3: 16

For more publications, please see the PubMed listing.

Selected Books/Chapters

Griffin RS, Brenner GJ (2012) Chronic Postsurgical Pain.  In Mashour and Avidan, Eds., Neurologic Complications of Surgery.  New York: Oxford Universtity Press.  Manuscript in press.

Griffin RS, Fink E, Brenner GJ (2009) Functional Anatomy of the Nociceptive System. In Fishman SM, Ballantyne JC, Rathmell JP, Eds., Bonica’s Management of Pain, 4th ed. Philadelphia: Lippincott.

Griffin RS, Woolf CJ (2007) Chapter 15: Pharmacology of Analgesia.  In Golan DE et al., Eds, Principles of Pharmacology: The Pathophysiologic Basis of Drug Therapy, 2nd Ed.  Philadelphia: Lippincott.

Costigan M, Griffin RS, Woolf CJ (2004) Microarray analysis of the pain pathway. In Mogil J, Ed., The Genetics of Pain. Seattle: IASP Press.

Selected Presentations

Phantom Limb Pain, Massachusetts General Hospital Interventional Spine Lecture Series, 2012.

Griffin RS, Costigan M, Allchorne AJ, D'Urso D, Woolf CJ, (2003) A bioinformatic analysis of temporal expression profiles in partial nerve injury models of neuropathic pain. Society for Neuroscience Poster Presentation.

 

Research Interests

Pain mechanisms