Louis C. Saeger, MD

Dr. Saeger is a partner with Advanced Spine and Pain Clinics of Minnesota. His career in pain management began in medical school at the University of Oklahoma, where he worked with Dr. Robert Foreman on mapping viscero-somatic convergence pathways in the spinothalamic tract, and in 1978, co-authored the pain clinic's patient education booklet, Coping with Pain. His anesthesiology residency and a two-year NIH pain research fellowship were in Seattle, at the University of Washington. He was among the last few physicians personally trained in regional anesthesia by both Drs. John Bonica and Danny Moore. As a Senior Fellow, he co-founded the Pain and Toxicity Research Program at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, where his research included studies on opioid pharmacology, anti-emetics, and the clinical introduction of PCA for bone marrow transplant patients.

Since entering private practice in 1986, Dr. Saeger has been increasingly focused on the diagnosis and treatment of spine-related pain. In the Seattle area, he was an active member of the interdisciplinary Puget Sound Spine Interest Group, serving on its board, and as President 2000-2001. He established the Interventional Division of Midwest Spine Institute in 2003, and has collaborated with Dr. Glenn Buttermann on studies of spinal biomechanics in an animal model for testing artificial discs. He has assumed a leadership role in Minnesota, serving on the chronic pain guidelines working group of the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement, and as President of the Minnesota Society of Interventional Pain Physicians. Dr. Saeger is a long-standing member of the International Pain and Spine Intervention Society, is an International Pain and Spine Intervention Society instructor, International Pain and Spine Intervention Society-certified in evidence-based medicine, and serves as a referee for the Pain Medicine journal.