in relief: thomas suchy’s pain medicine

Dr. Thomas Suchy was born and raised just outside of Buffalo, New York, where his family instilled in him the three core values around which he’s built his life: hard work, humility, community.

Suchy and his sister were raised by their parents in what he describes as a typical, middle-class suburban community. They were encouraged to focus on their educations and reminded often of the importance of gratitude and of giving back wherever possible.

“It’s definitely a Buffalo thing,” he reflects. “We’re humble, but we work hard and we care about each other. That work ethic and sense of togetherness are ingrained in who I am.”

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After graduation from Canisius High School, he attended the The State University of New York College at Geneseo for a degree in biology. Before arriving at Geneseo, Suchy hadn’t really considered a career in medicine, but the popularity of pre-med studies among his peers in the biology program piqued his interest–and sparked his competitive spirit.

“I remember thinking, ‘Why is everyone doing pre-med? What’s the appeal?’” Suchy recalls. “And then that curiosity led me to think, ‘Why not me?’”

He started shadowing local physicians while a student at Geneseo to see if the career path could be for him, and found himself deeply moved by an experience shadowing a psychiatrist at the Western New York Children’s Psychiatric Center.

“It’s been a long time since I shadowed with her–Dr. Ramirez,” he says. “But she was so kind and so empathetic with these children and families. To see how powerful that physician-patient relationship can be was very emotional for me. That’s probably when I decided I’d try medical school.”

Toward the end of medical school at the University at Buffalo in 2013, Suchy decided he would specialize in anesthesiology and pain management.

He identified Yale’s School of Medicine as the ideal place to complete his residency. Yale’s Department of Anesthesiology dates back to 1968 and is considered one of the birthplaces of modern anesthesia, a key player in improving both the efficacy and the safety of anesthesia in the 20th century.

“I wanted to go where the best were,” he says. “I wanted to see how they were doing things, learn from them, and bring that knowledge back to Buffalo.”

So that’s what he did. After his residency at Yale, he completed a fellowship in Pain Management at the Cleveland Clinic. Yale, with its rich history of innovation in the field, had been the ideal place to learn everything there was to learn about anesthesia.

The Cleveland Clinic–home to some of the world’s leading researchers and clinicians in interventional pain medicine, and with a reputation for innovation and progress in that field–was the best place for him to take his expertise a level deeper.

Finally, with his residency and fellowship behind him and equipped with the kind of deep knowledge he’d always wanted to bring back to Buffalo, Suchy was ready to come home.

At that time, none of Buffalo’s hospitals or universities had the sort of pain medicine program Suchy had seen at the Cleveland Clinic, so he set his sights on building one himself.

In 2018, Suchy shared his vision for Buffalo’s first hospital-based, outpatient interventional pain clinic with ECMC Chief Operating Officer Andrew Davis. Almost immediately, Davis and his team at ECMC invited Suchy to bring that vision to life with them.

“When I first started at ECMC, we were building from scratch,” Suchy says. “There was no staff, no office space.”

Seven years later, ECMC’s Center for Interventional Spine and Pain, under Thomas Suchy’s leadership, employs a full staff in their office space on Grider Street, including two doctors–Suchy himself and fellow Buffalo native Dr. Michael E. Farrell II–with a third set to join the team this summer.

The Center, already a model other hospitals in the area are beginning to emulate, leverages cutting-edge interventional procedures, regenerative therapies and spinal cord stimulation technologies to offer its patients the best in chronic pain treatment.

“When I do a procedure, I think of it like an art form,” Suchy says. “It should look like it’s going to be in a textbook. Everything should be done with the utmost care and attention to detail.”

It’s not just the technology and clinical precision, though, that make the Center special.

Suchy is no stranger to the the fact that for decades, patients suffering with chronic pain have struggled to find relief, often finding themselves bounced from one doctor to another, trying treatment after treatment, sometimes even undergoing invasive surgeries to no avail.

He’s trying to change that landscape, to take an approach to pain medicine that centers the patient’s holistic well-being–physical and mental.

“I always tell my patients, ‘I’ve read your chart, but I want to hear from you. What’s bothering you the most? What brought you here today?’ That open-ended question allows them to talk for a few minutes without interruption, and it’s amazing how quickly I get to the heart of the problem,” Suchy explains. “It’s a simple thing, but it makes a huge difference.”

By focusing on patients, allowing them to tell their own stories in their own words, he and his team are building a bond of trust.

Asked what excites him about the future of his field, Suchy, true as ever to his hometown, speaks first and foremost of the development of Buffalo as a regional leader in pain management.

“We’re doing things here now that people didn’t even know were possible a few years ago,” he says. “I want Buffalo to be known for having the best pain care in the region. We’re already doing that with ECMC, but I see us expanding, bringing care to communities that might not have access to it right now.”

A different doctor, with the kind of training and experience Suchy has, might be inclined to take their skills beyond the small communities that raised them in search of accolades and glamour.

But Thomas Suchy is not that doctor. The values he learned at home from his parents and grandparents have not been overshadowed by his success, but brought into sharper relief.

“I love what I do,” Suchy says. “It’s about creating a system that serves the community. Every day is a new challenge, and that keeps me going.”