Peripheral Neuropathic Pain With Dr. Miroslav Bačkonja

Peripheral neuropathic pain is primarily influenced by the biology and pathophysiology of the underlying structures, peripheral sensory nerves, and their central pathways.

In this episode, Kait Nevel, MD speaks with Miroslav Bačkonja, MD, an author of the article “Peripheral Neuropathic Pain,” in the Continuum October 2024 Pain Management in Neurology issue.

Dr. Nevel is a Continuum® Audio interviewer and a neurologist and neuro-oncologist at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Dr. Bačkonja is the clinical director in the Division of Intramural Research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

Additional Resources

Read the article: Peripheral Neuropathic Pain

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Host: @IUneurodocmom

Full episode transcript available here

Dr Jones: This is Dr Lyell Jones, Editor in Chief of Continuum, the premier topic-based neurology clinical review and CME journal from the American Academy of Neurology. Thank you for joining us on Continuum Audio, which features conversations with Continuum's guest editors and authors who are the leading experts in their fields. Subscribers to the Continuum Journal can read the full article or listen to verbatim recordings of the article and have access to exclusive interviews not featured on the podcast. Please visit the link in the episode notes for more information on the article, subscribing to the journal, and how to get CME.

Dr Nevel: Hello, this is Dr Kait Nevel. Today I'm interviewing Dr Miroslav Backonja about his article on peripheral neuropathic pain, which appears in the October 2024 Continuum issue on pain management and neurology. Welcome to the podcast. 

Dr Backonja: Thank you. 

Dr Nevel: Misha, can you please introduce yourself to the audience?

Dr Backonja: Yes, I’m Miroslav Backonja, but everybody calls me Misha. So everybody knows me by that. I'm a training neurologist, and I also have training as well as certification in pain management. And most of my practice has been where neurology meets the pain, which is neuropathic pain. I spend some time basic science lab and then transition into clinical research. And I was in academia for a couple of decades and was most recently recruited by NCCIH National Center for Complementary and Integrated Health and have been there for two and a half years now. 

Dr Nevel: That's wonderful. I would love to hear more about your career at the NCCIH, a little bit and what you do in your role now, and how that came to be.

Dr Backonja: Yeah, I was recruited to help and provide clinical support to efforts at NCCIH in the phenotyping of pain and neurologists who've done research in quantitative sensory assessment and other quantitative means of assessment of pain. Coming to NIH was very rewarding and quite of a learning experience. After six months being there, I've discovered that NIH is the