Alicia Karas – DVM, MS, DACVA

A veterinary anesthesiologist, pain specialist, and animal welfare scientist, Dr. Alicia Karas has dedicated her career to the alleviation of pain in animals. She is board-certified by the American College of Veterinary Anesthesiologists.

Dr. Karas graduated from Tufts Veterinary School in 1989 and for several years worked in small animal and exotic practice in North Carolina and Texas prior to returning to Tufts to do a residency in anesthesiology. She developed an interest in pain medicine at a time when the field was still developing, and stayed at Tufts for a number of reasons: a love of New England, the Cummings School's commitment to animal and human welfare, and her husband's post at Tufts Medical School.

Dr. Karas started an elective on pain management in 1994 for DVM students and residents, and, along with her anesthesia section colleagues, brought many of the lectures into the school's core curriculum. She uses video often in her lectures to illustrate various indicators of pain in many species.

At the Cummings School, Dr. Karas teaches anesthesia and pain medicine delivery for both companion and laboratory animal populations. She is always examining ways to assess pain and improve quality-of-life, either in the clinic or through her research. This includes reducing the pain of examinations by using skillful sedation, meeting postoperative needs for pain control and treating chronic pain. What I love about teaching is the ability to share this vision of making hospital visits and everyday life as comfortable and fulfilled as possible, she says. There are so many ways to do this—our clinicians and technicians work to diagnose and cure illness; along with that goes the experience of being cared for.

In her free time, Dr. Karas and her husband enjoy spending time with their two charismatic black Labradors, who participate in obedience competitions. She brings her love of observation and positive reward for pets to her work—most remarkably by motivating a cat with severely disabled front paws to begin using them again if he touched his owner's hand for a treat.

Dr. Karas's academic and research interests can be found on her faculty profile.