Operating Room - Pain Clinic

During this rotation, residents have an opportunity to learn about a variety of chronic pain syndromes and their management. Pain medicine is one of the fastest growing specialties of anesthesiology, with a special certification offered by the American Board of Anesthesiologists after completion of a 12-month accredited fellowship program. The clinic is housed at the University Hospital with fluoroscopic procedures and implants being performed and at KU MedWest, which is an outpatient surgical center in suburban Johnson County.
The residents are primarily involved in the formulation of the diagnosis and treatment plan for each individual pain patient. Each resident also has an opportunity to participate in pain relieving procedures such as fluoroscopic guided epidural steroid injections, RFA, discography, spinal cord stimulator implantation and management.
Approximately 200-250 patients are seen in clinic and 160-200 interventional pain procedures are performed on a monthly basis.
The most common pain syndromes encountered are:

• Cancer pain
• Cervical radiculopathy
• Disc herniation
• Facial pain and trigeminal neuralgia
• Headache
• Low back pain
• Lumbar radiculopathy/sciatica
• Myofacial pain
• Neck pain
• Peripheral neuropathy
• Post back surgery pain syndrome
• Post herpetic neuralgia
• Complex regional pain syndrome
• Shoulder pain
• Pain after motor vehicle accidents

The resident will be exposed to a variety of interventional pain techniques, including but not limited to:

• Epidural steroid injections--Cervical, thoracic and lumbar
• Diagnostic and therapeutic facet (zygapophyseal) joint blocks
• Diagnostic nerve root block
• Radiofrequency rhizotomy
• Sacroiliac joint injections
• Stellate ganglion blocks
• Lumbar sympathetic blocks
• Hypogastric plexus blocks
• Celiac plexus blocks
• Nucleoplasty
• Trigger point injections
• Diagnostic discography
• Spinal cord stimulator

Our faculty include:

Edward Braun, MD
Talal Khan, MD