Dr. Athir Morad is an assistant professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine and neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Morad is an attending physician in both the Neurocritical Care Unit (NCCU) and operating rooms. He is currently the neuroanesthesiology Comprehensive Unit Based Safety Program (CUSP) team champion. In that role, he facilitates an ongoing quality and safety improvement initiative to enhance safety culture within the neurosurgical perioperative arena.

The primary focus of Dr. Morad’s research focuses on the perioperative management of pain for patients undergoing neurosurgery. He has completed two randomized controlled trials on the efficacy of patient controlled analgesia (PCA) in patients following craniotomy. Current research interests include studying the safety of opioid administration following craniotomy using end-tidal CO2 detection.  He is the principal investigator of a new prospective randomized controlled trial to determine the efficacy of scalp nerve blockade with local anesthetic for patients undergoing surgery for Arnold Chiari malformations.  Additionally, he is collaborating with a multidisciplinary team to better understand the characteristics and management of chronic headache following subarachnoid hemorrhage.

Education

Dr. Morad was a Howard Hughes undergraduate research scholar at the National Institutes of Health and Georgetown University from where he graduated with honors. He earned his M.D. from the University of Virginia and completed residency training in the Georgetown transitional medicine program at Inova Fairfax Hospital and in anesthesiology at the Johns Hopkins University. He performed a dual fellowship in surgical (SICU) and neurocritical care at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.