Ramana Naidu, MD

Dr. Ramana (Ramo) Naidu is an anesthesiologist and pain physician who is the medical director of pain management at MarinHealth Medical Center and the medical director of Marin Specialty Surgery Center. He helps patients manage, reduce, or eliminate pain and suffering that occurs after medical illness, trauma, or surgery and puts an emphasis on preventing pain from becoming persistent. Naidu is primarily based at the MarinHealth Spine Institute, serving to help patients with pain before and after surgery. He emphasizes trying to manage pain without relying on opioid medications using a multi-disciplinary approach involving pain psychologists, physical therapists, and complementary and integrative approaches. He performs advanced interventional procedures with the goal of sustained relief. Beyond epidural, joint, sympathetic, and peripheral nerve injections, Naidu performs radiofrequency ablation of major joints and nerves and minimally-invasive-spine procedures such as indirect and direct lumbar decompression, posterior sacroiliac joint fusion, and intradiscal therapeutics. As a neuromodulator, he is an expert on spinal cord stimulation (SCS), dorsal root ganglion stimulation (DRGS), and peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS).

Naidu earned a medical degree at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, where he was born and raised. He completed a residency in anesthesiology at the University of Washington in Seattle, followed by a fellowship in pain management at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), where he continued to practice for another five years as an assistant professor. He was a Fulbright Scholar in public health in Copenhagen, Denmark, with the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe. During this time, he studied hospital-acquired infections and the dissemination of information regarding prevention. Dr. Naidu is engaged in clinical research as he is interested in ensuring that we have safe, economical, and effective therapies for specific pain conditions.

The professional societies Naidu belongs to include the American Society of Anesthesiologists, California Society of Anesthesiologists, American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine, International Association for the Study of Pain, American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, California Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, North American Neuromodulation Society, International Neuromodulation Society, American Society of Pain and Neuroscience, and he is the President-Elect of the Pacific Spine & Pain Society.