Personalized Perioperative Pain Program (PPP) is important for all surgical patients, and especially for patients who suffer from chronic pain and/or opioid use disorder prior to the surgery. As surgeons account for one third of opioid prescriptions in the United States and postoperative opioid prescriptions are considered to be a major contributor to the opioid epidemic, the Johns Hopkins’ Personalized Pain Program (PPP) was established to manage perioperative pain.

The Perioperative Pain Program (PPP) provides continuity of care along 3 stages of the perioperative period: (1) the outpatient period before surgery, (2) hospitalization after surgery, and (3) outpatient follow-up after surgery. Our multidisciplinary team is composed of acute and chronic pain specialists and a psychiatrist, and can readily make referrals to intensive outpatient substance use treatment, an interventional chronic pain clinic, physical therapy, and integrated medicine. Since established in 2017, our multi-modal/multi-disciplinary approach has been effective in weaning down opioids and minimizing excessive opioid prescriptions while supporting patient’s recovery and addressing also pre-surgery challenges in pain and opioid management of chronic pain and opioid use disorder patients.

Ronen Shechter is an assistant professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine and the co-director of the Personalized Pain Program at the Johns Hopkins University. He earned his medical degree in 1999 from the Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem and completed his training in anesthesiology and a fellowship in pain medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. In 2014, after completing a research fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, he joined the department as a full-time assistant professor. He is board certified in anesthesiology and pain medicine, and has expertise in managing a wide variety of chronic and acute pain conditions. He believes in a multi-modal and multi-disciplinary approach to pain management.