Information

Related Research Units

Anesthesiology, Critical Care and Pain Medicine Research
Perioperative Anesthesia Research
Berde Lab Research

Research Overview

Dr. Ocay’s research program centers on advancing the assessment and understanding of abnormal pain processing in children, with a particular focus on rare pediatric pain disorders. His program continues to innovate in quantitative sensory testing, developing and validating scalable and accessible tools to support clinical and longitudinal research. His current work focuses on elucidating the mechanisms underlying pediatric erythromelalgia, a rare and debilitating pain condition. He is spearheading an international, multicenter, and multidisciplinary collaboration on pediatric erythromelalgia aimed at establishing a functional data registry to support consensus recommendations for diagnosis, management, and future therapeutic development.

Research Background

Dr. Ocay completed his PhD at McGill University, where his research focused on quantitative sensory testing and the biopsychosocial profiling of youth with chronic pain to inform personalized pain management strategies.

Publications

  1. Influence of psychological and somatosensory characteristics on treatment outcomes in adolescent chronic postsurgical and primary pain. Pain Rep. 2026 Apr; 11(2):e1408. View Abstract
  2. Patient-Oriented Priorities for Pediatric Erythromelalgia: A Priority-Setting Process. Children (Basel). 2025 Nov 02; 12(11). View Abstract
  3. Validating a home-based proxy- and self-administered quantitative sensory testing in youth and young adults undergoing regional anesthesia for orthopedic procedures. Reg Anesth Pain Med. 2025 Sep 25. View Abstract
  4. Pain experience and perception in individuals with Snijders Blok-Campeau syndrome. Front Pain Res (Lausanne). 2025; 6:1540422. View Abstract
  5. Pain experience of children with Christianson syndrome. Pain. 2025 Feb 19; 166(7):1610-1621. View Abstract
  6. Pediatric erythromelalgia from multidisciplinary perspectives: a scoping review. Pediatr Res. 2025 Sep; 98(3):786-799. View Abstract
  7. Development and validation of a home quantitative sensory testing tool-kit to assess changes in sensory and pain processing: a study in healthy young adults. Pain. 2025 Jan 01; 166(1):52-66. View Abstract
  8. Beyond numbers: integrating qualitative analysis into quantitative sensory testing for neuropathic pain. Front Pain Res (Lausanne). 2024; 5:1351602. View Abstract
  9. Trends in Brain Research: A Bibliometric Analysis. Can J Neurol Sci. 2023 Nov 07; 1-11. View Abstract
  10. Clinical Characterization of Pediatric Erythromelalgia: A Single-Center Case Series. Children (Basel). 2023 Jul 26; 10(8). View Abstract
  11. Axial rotation and pain are associated with facet joint osteoarthritis in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. Osteoarthritis Cartilage. 2023 08; 31(8):1101-1110. View Abstract
  12. Validation of the Critical-Care Pain Observation Tool (CPOT) in pediatric patients undergoing orthopedic surgery. Can J Pain. 2023; 7(1):2156332. View Abstract
  13. The Psychosocial Characteristics and Somatosensory Function of Children and Adolescents Who Meet the Criteria for Chronic Nociplastic Pain. J Pain Res. 2023; 16:487-500. View Abstract
  14. Electroencephalographic characteristics of children and adolescents with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Pain Rep. 2022 Nov-Dec; 7(6):e1054. View Abstract
  15. Clusters of facilitatory and inhibitory conditioned pain modulation responses in a large sample of children, adolescents, and young adults with chronic pain. Pain Rep. 2022 Nov-Dec; 7(6):e1032. View Abstract
  16. Accurate classification of pain experiences using wearable electroencephalography in adolescents with and without chronic musculoskeletal pain. Front Pain Res (Lausanne). 2022; 3:991793. View Abstract
  17. Phenotyping Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain in Male and Female Adolescents: Psychosocial Profiles, Somatosensory Profiles and Pain Modulatory Profiles. J Pain Res. 2022; 15:591-612. View Abstract
  18. Psychosocial and psychophysical assessment in paediatric patients and young adults with chronic back pain: A cluster analysis. Eur J Pain. 2022 04; 26(4):855-872. View Abstract
  19. Pain Catastrophizing Throughout the Perioperative Period in Adolescents With Idiopathic Scoliosis. Clin J Pain. 2021 09 01; 37(9):688-697. View Abstract
  20. Clinical use of Electroencephalography in the Assessment of Acute Thermal Pain: A Narrative Review Based on Articles From 2009 to 2019. Clin EEG Neurosci. 2022 Mar; 53(2):124-132. View Abstract
  21. Predicting Acute Postoperative Pain Trajectories and Long-Term Outcomes of Adolescents after Spinal Fusion Surgery. Pain Res Manag. 2020; 2020:9874739. View Abstract
  22. Acute postoperative opioid consumption trajectories and long-term outcomes in pediatric patients after spine surgery. J Pain Res. 2019; 12:1673-1684. View Abstract
  23. Safety of Patient-Controlled Analgesia After Surgery in Children And Adolescents: Concerns And Potential Solutions. Front Pediatr. 2018; 6:336. View Abstract
  24. Evidence of impaired pain modulation in adolescents with idiopathic scoliosis and chronic back pain. Spine J. 2019 04; 19(4):677-686. View Abstract

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