Anesthesia and Sedation for Interventional Pain Procedures

Chronic pain patients requiring anesthetic care for interventional pain procedures provide unique challenges to the anesthesiologists. This patient population often presents with significant psychiatric comorbidities and complex polypharmacy. Concurrent anxiety, hyperalgesia, and claustrophobia can make anesthetic management of these patients difficult. Interventional pain procedures often require patient awareness and feedback for specific aspects of the procedure to avoid serious complications. Inappropriate or mis-timed sedation can increase the risk of procedural complications. Therefore, anesthesiologists must be intimately familiar with the critical portions and potential pitfalls of each planned procedure. This chapter focuses on preoperative evaluation and optimization, important intraoperative events, and potential complications for a wide range of interventional pain procedures.