Founded in 1989, the New Jersey Pain Institute is a service provided and staffed by the Pain Management specialists of the Department of Anesthesia. Trained department professionals include the director, pain faculty, psychologist and a nursing staff. This very busy, accredited, multidisciplinary service presently treats over 2,000 chronic outpatient visits and over 8,500 inpatient visits annually. The clinic, is located on the 5th floor of the Clinical Academic Building (CAB).

The pain service consists of two modalities: the Acute Pain Service and the Chronic Pain Service. The Acute Pain Service provides consultation for perioperative pain, labor pain, and pain related to oncologicdisease, and patients admitted for acute decompression of chronic back pain. Upon referral by one of the medical, surgical, or labor and delivery services, the patient is evaluated by the Acute Pain Team, and the most optimal plan for pain management is discussed. Balanced analgesic treatment modalities include analgesic therapy, physiotherapy, continuous epidural analgesia, patient-controlled analgesia (PCA), and continuous regional block techniques.

The Chronic Pain Management Service evaluates and treats patients as outpatients or inpatients. The multidisciplinary pain management program provides optimal treatment of chronic pain syndromes utilizing pharmacology, nerve blocks, physiotherapy and psychological intervention. "State-of-the-art" pain treatment includes spinal cord stimulation, intraspinal opioid therapy, cryoanalgesia, radiofrequency thermacoagulation, (intradisc, peridisc procedures) and epiduroscopic procedures. The most common problems treated are low back pain, failed back syndrome, complex regional pain syndrome, neuropathic pain, myofascial pain and neck/shoulder pain syndrome.

In addition, the pain team works with the Oncology Service at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School to provide the most up-to-date pain management techniques for cancer pain including oral opioids therapy, implanted epidural infusion devices, neuroablative procedures under fluoroscopic and CT-scan guidance.

Weekly educational meetings with fellows and rotating residents are held with the director, the psychologist and nursing staff to discuss optimal pain management for each patient. Formal lectures and a Journal Club for the residents/fellows are held on a regular basis. Lectures, including all pain topics are held throughout the entire year. Clinical research is also assigned for appropriate pain subjects