A free public resource for patients and physicians.
Created by Keith W. Schmidt, MD — Board-Certified Pain Medicine, Hoffman Estates, IL.

Why I built it

Every week in my practice, patients arrive for procedures with anxiety, with confusion about whether to hold their blood thinner, with questions about what they can do beforehand to give the procedure its best chance, and with no clear roadmap for the days after.

I built PainPrep so that any patient — mine or anyone else’s — could walk into a pain procedure prepared, informed, and recovering well. It is not a marketing site. It is not gated to my patients. It is a free, public reference tool for the entire pain medicine community.

What PainPrep covers

For every procedure I perform — spinal cord stimulation, dorsal root ganglion stimulation, peripheral nerve stimulation, epidural steroid injections, radiofrequency ablation, the MILD procedure, kyphoplasty, basivertebral nerve ablation, and more — PainPrep provides:

  • A plain-language explanation of what the procedure is and how it works
  • Anticoagulation guidance — when to hold blood thinners, when to continue
  • Pre-procedure exercises to optimize outcomes
  • The research evidence with primary citations
  • Post-procedure instructions: activity restrictions, warning signs, recovery timelines

The content is aligned with specialty society guidelines and insurance plans, and is updated as the evidence evolves.

Who PainPrep is for

  • Patients preparing for a procedure they have already been scheduled for
  • Patients still researching whether a procedure is right for them
  • Physicians who want a vetted resource to share with their own patients
  • Trainees and learners who want to understand a procedure end-to-end

Why this exists

I’m a board-certified pain medicine physician in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. I’m also a U.S. patent-holder for a spinal cord stimulator placement device, the chair of the American Society of Pain & Neuroscience’s Healthy Longevity & Age-Related Pain Committee, and medical director at Ascension Saint Alexius and UChicago Medicine AdventHealth GlenOaks.

The tools I build for my own practice reflect the experience I bring to every patient. PainPrep is one of those tools. I’m sharing it freely because the pain medicine community is small, and patients are better off when they walk into a procedure already knowing what’s coming.

If you’re a patient of mine

PainPrep is the same resource I share with my own patients before a procedure. If you’re scheduled for a procedure with me and have questions before you visit PainPrep, you can also reach my office directly through the contact page or by calling (847) 981-3630.