Dr Mary Suma Cardosa

Dr Mary Suma Cardosa is Consultant Anaesthesiologist and Pain Management Specialist at Hospital Selayang, Selangor. She obtained her Masters in Anaesthesiology in 1991 from Universiti Malaya and the Fellowship of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthesiologists (ANZCA) in 1993, after which she set up the Acute Pain Service in Hospital Kuala Lumpur (HKL); she has subsequently helped set up APS in several other Ministry of Health (MOH) hospitals.

She obtained the Fellowship in Pain management from ANZCA in 1999, after training at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, Australia and set up the Pain clinic in Hospital Selayang in 2000, which she continues to run till today. She also helped to set up the Palliative Care unit in the same hospital, and currently her clinical work is mainly with chronic pain and difficult cancer pain. In 2002, she started a cognitive behaviour therapy-based pain management program in Hospital Selayang, the first of its kind in Southeast Asia.  Dr Cardosa is currently also responsible for developing Pain services in the MOH, Malaysia.

Dr Cardosa regularly gives lectures and organises workshops for doctors, nurses and other health care providers from all over Malaysia on the management of acute, chronic and cancer pain. She initiated the implementation of “Pain as the 5th Vital Sign” in Ministry of Health hospitals, and has also been involved in development of the clinical practice guidelines on Management of Cancer pain as well as guidelines on management of neuropathic pain, acute pain and back pain.