WSSA Spring Scientific Meeting Session IV

Perioperative Buprenorphine Management

Katherin Peperzak, MD
Assistant Professor, Interim Medical Director at Center for Pain Relief at UWMC-Roosevelt
University of Washington


About This Session

Traditional guidance has been that patients maintained on buprenorphine perioperatively may have difficult to control pain refractory to treatment with full agonist opioids. This presentation provides updated information to dispel myths and provide reassurance that buprenorphine can be continued perioperatively without compromising adequate pain care.

Learning Objectives:  

  1. Explain the pharmacokinetic profile of buprenorphine and its effect on perioperative pain management
  2. Provide appropriate guidance to patients on buprenorphine prior to surgery regarding expectations and options for post-operative pain control
  3. Utilize the strategy of micro-dose induction for patients who have had interruptions in buprenorphine therapy

About Katherin Peperzak, MD

Katherin Peperzak, M.D. is an assistant professor in the University of Washington Department of Anesthesiology & Pain Medicine, currently serving as Medical Director for the Center for Pain Relief at UWMC-Roosevelt. As a board certified physician in Anesthesiology, Pain Medicine, and Addiction Medicine she provides comprehensive outpatient pain management at the Center for Pain Relief as well as acute inpatient pain care at Harborview Medical Center, the Level 1 Trauma Center for the WWAMI region. Dr. Peperzak earned her BS in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, her M.D. from the University of Pittsburgh, and continued her training in Pittsburgh with residency in anesthesiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and fellowship in pain medicine at Allegheny General Hospital/West Penn Hospital. She relocated to Seattle in 2014 to become University of Washington faculty, where she saw a unique opportunity to join and shape a pain team that truly values an interdisciplinary approach. She is involved in several studies examining postoperative opioid use in patients maintained on buprenorphine perioperatively as well as helped develop a protocol for cross-titrating patients from chronic full agonist opioids to buprenorphine.

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