Dr. Lou Saeger earned his MD degree from the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, and entered private practice in 1986, after completing his residency in Anesthesiology with the University of Washington, and a two-year NIH fellowship in Pain Research with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. He is Board-Certified in both Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine and is a World Institute of Pain Fellow in Interventional Pain Practice.
Since the early 1990s, Dr. Saeger has been increasingly focused on the diagnosis and treatment of spine-related pain. After moving to the Twin Cities area in 2003, he established the Interventional Division of Midwest Spine Institute, and has collaborated with Dr. Glenn Buttermann on studies of spinal biomechanics in an animal model for testing an artificial disc prototype, and more recently has been a co-investigator on a study of epidural injection of amniotic fluid for low back pain. 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 past President and current Director at Large of the Minnesota Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, and also represents the Minnesota Medical Association on the Department of Health’s X-ray Safety Advisory Committee.
Dr. Saeger is a long-standing member of the International Spine Intervention Society (SIS), is an SIS clinical instructor, SIS-certified in evidence-based medicine, and serves as a peer-review referee for the journal Pain Medicine. He is also an active member of the North American Spine Society, the North American Neuromodulation Society, the World Institute of Pain, and the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians. He has been honored with inclusion in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine’s “Top Doctors” issues for 2019, 2020 and has once again been listed in “America’s Best Physicians” for 2020.