Newsletter

NANS Board of Directors Welcome New Directors-at-Large

Michael Fishman, MD MBA

Michael Fishman, MD MBA, is an interventional pain specialist at the Center for Interventional Pain and Spine. He graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, PA, and subsequently completed an internship in general surgery at Lankenau Medical Center in Wynewood, PA. Thereafter, he earned a Master of Business Administration at Drexel University before returning to clinical medicine and completing a residency in Anesthesiology at Yale-New Haven Hospital. During residency, he developed a particular interest in pain medicine and neuromodulation and completed a pain medicine fellowship at the Stanford Pain Management Center in 2015. Since then, he has practiced comprehensive pain medicine outside Philadelphia, PA, where he utilizes neuromodulation to restore function and improve quality of life in patients.

Dr. Fishman has been actively involved with NANS since fellowship; he was elected as Vice-Chair of the Residents and Fellows Section (RFS) in 2014, appointed as Co-Chair in 2015, and currently serves as Director-at-Large of the RFS. In 2017, he was appointed Co-Director of NANS Preconference Workshops, where he and his co-directors have since planned and executed the premier NANS cadaver courses for pain fellows, neurosurgical residents, engineers, and attending physicians.

In addition to NANS and a busy clinical private practice, Dr. Fishman also engages in clinical research. Since 2015, he has served as an investigator on over ten neuromodulation clinical trials and published on the subjects of pain and neuromodulation in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Fishman is committed to redefining the outcomes metrics we use to measure response to pain care and neuromodulation and is actively involved in developing tools to predict and track meaningful metrics related to the pain experience.

Kiran V. Patel, MD
Kiran V. Patel, MD, is an interventional pain management physician practicing in New York City holding board certifications in Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine. Dr. Patel’s areas of interest include pre- and post-surgical spine pain, pelvic pain, facial pain, and neuromodulation. Dr. Patel earned her medical degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Thereafter, she completed a residency in Anesthesiology at Columbia University Medical Center-Presbyterian Hospital followed by a pain medicine fellowship at the same institution. After graduating from her fellowship, Dr. Patel joined the Spine & Pain Institute of New York, where she continues to practice.

In addition, Dr. Patel is the Director of Neurosurgical Pain at Lenox Hill Hospital and oversees the acute and chronic inpatient pain services. Dr Patel is a Clinical Assistant Professor in Anesthesiology & Pain Medicine at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra Northwell. Dr. Patel currently oversees the Pain Medicine rotation for the Hofstra Anesthesiology residency program and has been named the Director for the Hofstra Pain Medicine fellowship.  

Prior to starting medical school, Dr. Patel worked as a biomedical engineering research assistant at the John’s Hopkins Center for Robotic Surgery, developing 3D reconstructive software for robotic command and haptic surgical instruments for both patient care and physician training. Dr. Patel has contributed to education in neuromodulation by participating as faculty for NANS training courses and contributing to neuromodulation textbooks. Dr. Patel’s ongoing clinical research in the areas of pelvic pain, facial pain, and dorsal root ganglion stimulation have resulted in featured abstracts at the NANS annual meeting.

Dr. Patel was among the initiative to establish the Women in Neuromodulation (WIN) section of NANS. She currently serves at the secretary for the WIN section and leads the New York/New Jersey chapter of WIN. She is also an active participant in the NANS mentorship program.

Ricardo Vallejo, MD PhD

Ricardo Vallejo, MD PhD, is a Pain Physician and Director of Research at Millennium Pain Center, Bloomington, IL. He received his medical degree at Univerdidad Libre in Cali, Colombia, and a PhD in Immunology at the Complutense University in Madrid, Spain. Dr. Vallejo completed his residency in Anesthesiology at Jackson Memorial Hospital (University of Miami), where he was Chief Resident in the Anesthesiology department. He specialized in Pain Medicine at Harvard University’s Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Vallejo is board certified in Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine by the American Board of Anesthesiology, and is a member of the examination boards of the World Institute of Pain and the American Board of Interventional Pain Physicians.

Dr. Vallejo’s academic accomplishments include authoring more than 80 articles published in national and international peer review journals, and he has been an invited speaker and abstract contributor in meetings and conferences around the world. He is the inventor of two granted U.S. patents and 10 more pending U.S. and international patents. Dr. Vallejo is a member of the editorial boards of international peer review journals, including Neuromodulation, Clinical Journal of Pain, Pain Physician, Journal of Opioid Management, Regional Anesthesia and Pain Management, and Revista Mexicana de Anestesiologia. He serves as an Associate Editor of Pain Practice and was the Chief Editor of Techniques in Regional Anesthesia and Pain Management.

Dr. Vallejo has been a member of the ASRA scientific committee since 2015 and has been a member of the NANS scientific committee, where he co-chairs the abstract selection subcommittee, since 2017. He was also Chair of the Scientific Educational Committee of the 2016 ASRA annual pain meeting and is the current chair of the scientific program for the NANS 2020 Annual Meeting. He is an Adjunct Research Professor at Illinois Wesleyan University.