Stephen Bruehl PhD

Dr. Stephen P. Bruehl is a Professor of Anesthesiology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 1994 and has worked clinically in the past with chronic pain patients as a member of a multidisciplinary chronic pain management team. Throughout his career, Dr. Bruehl has conducted research focused on understanding the mechanisms of and factors influencing chronic pain. He has had long-standing interests in topics that include Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, the influence of endogenous opioids and psychosocial factors on pain, and interactions between the cardiovascular and pain modulatory systems. His work has more recently focused on identifying factors that predict responses to opioid analgesics and understanding the mechanisms that contribute to these predictive effects. He has published more than 160 peer-reviewed articles regarding pain, as well as several book chapters regarding CRPS. Dr. Bruehl has been the principal investigator on eight pain-related NIH R01 research projects, and he is Associate Editor of the journal Pain and Annals of Behavioral Medicine. Dr. Bruehl was a member of the IASP committee that developed the 2012 IASP diagnostic criteria for CRPS and was co-leader of the research consortium that conducted the studies validating the Budapest Criteria.