Join our live stream of the main meeting sessions from the 51st Annual Regional Anesthesiology and Acute Pain Medicine Meeting April 16-18, 2026!

 Main meeting sessions schedule

This year’s theme, “Redefining the Role and Value of Regional Anesthesia,” invites us to confront the contradictions, complexities, and possibilities that define our field today. 

Our plenary session topics were selected to prompt discussion and challenge some currently held beliefs. We invite three guest surgeons (an orthopedic trauma surgeon, a sports surgeon, and a peripheral nerve surgeon) to bring us their insights. We bring international faculty from Europe and Asia to introduce us to a different perspective on acute pain management. We welcome Patrick Tighe, MD, MS, with his passion for AI innovation, quality and patient safety, and research as a special speaker.

We provide 6 Ask the Experts panels for you to interact with experts on challenging clinical topics. Our extremely popular parallel PBLD sessions will once again be offered, with over 40 topics to choose from in a more relaxed setting.

We craft our 51st Annual Regional Anesthesiology and Acute Pain Medicine Meeting with three goals in mind:

1. To explore the potential and define the limits of different regional anesthesia techniques
2. To provide the audience access to faculty who are at the forefront of the science, education, and leadership in our subspecialty, and
3. To focus on value-added care that emphasizes analgesic effectiveness.

Speakers:

Jason Buehler, MD; UTHSC College of Medicine Knoxville, TN

Che Solla MD; MBA, FASA; UTHSC College of Medicine Knoxville, TN

Moderator:

Raj Gupta, MD; Vanderbilt University Medical Center Nashville, TN

Join us for an insightful webinar featuring Drs. Nadia Hernandez and Jennifer Noerenberg, with special moderation by Dr. Melody Anderson, as they explore practical strategies for building and sustaining regional anesthesia services across diverse practice settings. This session will highlight scalable staffing and workflow models, key operational components for both hospital-based and private practice environments, and approaches to maintaining quality, safety, and education across large, multisite departments. Attendees will also gain insight into financial considerations, efficiency optimization, and strategies to strengthen service differentiation in competitive markets.

In this webinar, Dr. Leena Mathew (Division of Pain Medicine, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York, NY) and Dr. Amy Pearson (Aurora Advocate Health, Milwaukee, WI) will explore the role of aromatherapy as an adjunctive modality in pain management. The session will review essential oil composition and labeling, including how breeding and cultivation influence chemical properties and therapeutic effects. Faculty will also discuss the neurobiological mechanisms of olfactory signaling in limbic pain processing and autonomic regulation, along with the evidence supporting aromatherapy for analgesia and anxiolysis. Practical guidance will be provided to help clinicians identify essential oils that can be safely incorporated into clinical practice.

In this webinar, Sarah Tierney and Yuqi Gu (University of Ottawa) will discuss the development and implementation of Acute Pain Service analgesic care pathways for rib fractures, lower limb amputation, and hip fracture patients. The session will review the evidence supporting peripheral nerve blocks in older adults with hip fracture and outline a pathway designed using principles of implementation science. Participants will gain practical insight into key resources, common and unexpected pitfalls, and real-world solutions for creating and sustaining APS analgesic pathways across diverse practice settings.

In this webinar, Dr. Eshraghi (Ochsner Health System), Dr. Bautista (University of Louisville), and Dr. Kohan (University of Virginia) will discuss perioperative management of patients with implanted neuromodulation devices, including peripheral nerve stimulation, intrathecal drug delivery systems, and spinal cord stimulators. The session will focus on key preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative considerations, with practical guidance on neuraxial anesthesia, device safety, and risk mitigation. Participants will gain insight into pre-procedural planning, technique modifications, multidisciplinary communication, and strategies to prevent complications such as electromagnetic interference, infection, device malfunction, and inadequate analgesia.

In this webinar, Dr. Sandra L. Kopp (Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN) and Dr. Jessica Weeks (Northwestern University, Chicago, IL) will review recent updates to the ASRA anticoagulation guidelines and discuss their practical application in clinical practice. The session will focus on how these updates impact regional anesthesia and perioperative decision-making, with real-world examples to help clinicians apply the guidelines safely and effectively in patient care.

Sessions from the 2024 Pain Medicine meeting.

Learning Objectives:

1. List the pain syndromes where addition of corticosteroid adds to the efficacy of the peripheral nerve block
2. Note the minimum effective doses and commonly used corticosteroid doses in peripheral nerve blocks; joint injections; and neuraxial, facet and sacroiliac joint injections
3. To present a summary of key recommendations regarding SI joint injections
4. Explain the characteristics of a good referral to PT /OT and good PT/OT evaluation
5. Understand our role in the ACR Blue Ribbon Fluoroscopy Safety Working Group

In this webinar, Dr. Sudheer Potru (Atlanta VA Healthcare System) and Dr. Anuj Aggarwal (Stanford University Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine) will examine the complex relationship between chronic pain and alcohol use disorder (AUD). The discussion will highlight the overlapping neurobiological mechanisms that contribute to both conditions, including shared reward and stress pathways, and how these factors can complicate clinical decision-making. Participants will gain practical insights into identifying patients at risk for AUD, appropriate diagnostic strategies, and the pain implications of commonly used AUD medications. The faculty will also address pharmacologic considerations and safety challenges when managing pain in patients with active or remitted AUD, including medication interactions, treatment planning, and risk mitigation.

Finance lecture by Justin Harvey.