Trends in Interventional Pain Management Procedures Performed by Nurse Anesthetists: A Retrospective Cross-sectional Study
Year Published: 2026
Authors: Max J. Hyman, BA, Parth K. Modi, MD, MS, Michael J. Kremer, MD, Eric C. Sun, MD, PhD
This research letter is a retrospective analysis of Medicare and private insurance claims (2017–2024) which found that nurse anesthetists’ share of interventional pain management procedures, especially facet joint/medial branch blocks and radiofrequency ablations, roughly doubled over the study period, though they still perform a small overall fraction of such procedures. The authors note this growth, concentrated in lumbar/sacral and non-image-guided procedures, may accelerate given rising nurse anesthetist employment and declining pain medicine fellowship applications, and they call for comparative outcome studies akin to those done for operating-room anesthesia care.