Vagus Nerve Stimulation

Peter S. Staats, MD, MBA is a board-certified physician specializing in pain medicine. Currently, Dr. Staats is seeing patients at Premier Pain Centers, a pain management practice with seven locations throughout New Jersey. He has been consistently recognized as one of the country’s foremost pain management doctors. This includes being named one of America’s Top Doctors by U.S. News and World Report for the last decade, noted as being among the top 1% of pain management physicians in the country. He has been acknowledged as one of New Jersey’s Top Doctors from New Jersey Monthly magazine for the past seven years. Dr. Staats was also the recipient of the Outstanding Pain Physician award, a national recognition as selected by his peers in the interventional pain medicine community.Dr. Staats is certified by the National Board of Medical Examiners, the American Board of Pain Medicine, and the American Board of Anesthesiology. He is also a fellow of the World Institute of Pain and the North American Neuromodulation Society. He is the author of over 200 articles, abstracts and chapters regarding pain management, and has written several books on the science of pain medicine.

Dr. Ayata is a Neurologist and a clinician-scientist dedicated to translational research on neurovascular function and dysfunction. He explores therapies to augment perfusion and oxygenation in acute stroke (e.g., hyperoxia, induced hypertension, Rho-kinase inhibition), the pathophysiological roles of injury depolarizations in stroke, and targeting spreading depression in migraine. Dr. Ayata is expert in non-invasive in vivo investigations of cerebrovascular physiology and pathophysiology in mice under full systemic physiological control. In collaboration with Dr. Joutel, Dr. Ayata defined a novel enhanced CSD-susceptibility phenotype in Notch3R90C mutant mice, providing an explanation for the increased incidence and severity of migraine with aura in CADASIL patients.

Dr. Lerman is a board-certified neurologist who specializes in pain management. He has extensive experience in ultrasound guidance for interventional pain procedures and interventional headache treatment, teaching and speaking nationally on these subjects. As an assistant professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine, Dr. Lerman carries out numerous clinical trials at UC San Diego Medical Center, the Altman Clinical Trial Research Institute, and the VA San Diego Healthcare System. His clinical reasarch studies primarily focus on understanding the impact of neurotechnologies (e.g. spinal cord stimulation, vagal nerve stimulation, and other central and peripheral nerve stimulation) on pain, learning and mental health disorders.. Dr. Lerman is a founding board member of the American Interventional Headache Society, faculty and founding member of the Regenerative Medicine special interest group within the American Society of Regional Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, and faculty member for the World Academy of Pain Medicine Ultrasonography.

Dr. Alaa Abd-Elsayed joined the faculty of the Anesthesiology Department at the University of Wisconsin in 2014 to provide Chronic Pain Medicine Services as part of the Interventional Pain Program. He received his medical training at Assiut University Medical School in Egypt, completed a master’s degree in Public Health, research fellowship at Cleveland Clinic, and residency in anesthesiology and pain management fellowship at University of Cincinnati. As part of the Interventional Pain Program, Dr. Abd-Elsayed evaluates patients at the Pain Clinic, and when an interventional pain treatment is appropriate, performs procedures at the Madison Surgery Center. Over the course of his career, he has received numerous research grants, published more than 70 peer-reviewed manuscripts and authored several editorials and book chapters. He has presented at more than 60 international and national conferences and has earned more than 15 awards at the state and national levels. In addition, he has served as a reviewer for more than 20 journals and as an editor to several journals.