Regional anesthesia provides potent perioperative pain control, reduces the risks of problematic complications and decreases the need for unnecessary opioid prescriptions. It's a patient- and staff-satisfier. Patients benefit from a minimizing of post-operative pain and the excessive grogginess caused by general anesthesia. Anesthesiologists also have incredible satisfaction with precise hands-on techniques that lead to improvements in patient care.

In my own practice, I split my time between managing acute pain and chronic pain. Because of my multimodal role in pain medicine, I'm very sensitive to caring for patients who have complicated medical and pain histories because I know they can suffer significant discomfort from even relatively simple surgeries.

Regional anesthesia is one of the most powerful tools I have at my disposal to reduce their pain. What's more, as the variety of nerve blocks and medication choices continue to evolve and grow, regional anesthesia will be used during more types of surgeries and more facilities will benefit from incorporating it into their pain management practices.