Graduating with high honors from the University of Kansas Medical Center in 2004, Tony received his Master of Science in Nurse Anesthesiology. He performed his clinical residency training in anesthesia at the University of Kansas Hospital, and has refined his skills in general and regional anesthesia techniques over the past two decades. With a passion to help his patients beyond acute surgical pain and enter the chronic pain arena, he pursued a year long Advanced Pain Management Fellowship at Texas Christian University in 2020. He is now dual-boarded and holds board certification in Anesthesia (CRNA), as well as a sub-specialty certification in Non-Surgical Pain Management (NSPM-C), both by the national governing board of the NBCRNA. With over 56,000 Nurse Anesthesiologists nationwide, only 145 have this unique dual-board certification. His professional memberships are with the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiologists (AANA) and the Texas Association of Nurse Anesthetists (TxANA).
Utilizing his skills and knowledge as an experienced CRNA in the operating room, Tony uses the most current best practices to guide and enhance the standard of care. Multi-modal, enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS), opioid-free anesthesia (OFA), and ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia blocks are some of the techniques used along with general anesthesia to ensure the best surgical experience. The focus is to optimize safety, reduce the time to wake up from surgery, limit the pain experience as much as possible, reduce narcotic need, and limit side effects of general anesthesia and opioid usage. These techniques have consistently given us patients that wake up with smiles on their faces in the recovery room.
Knowing that 20-30% of the general population in the U.S. has some form of chronic pain, Tony pursued a fellowship at TCU to offer pain services outside of the operating room. During his fellowship, he further developed his already advanced ultrasound skills to treat musculoskeletal pain (muscle, bone, joint). Common, painless interventions that can be done in the office with ultrasound are trigger point injections, nerve entrapment hydrodissection, nerve blocks, steroid joint injections, occipital neuralgia injection, genicular nerve ablation (chronic knee pain), and stellate ganglion blocks (PTSD, CRPS, Long Covid).
