Dr. Gurpreet Singh Padda, MD, MBA, MHP

Interventional pain physician and anesthesiologist, practicing in St. Louis for more than two decades.

Dr. Padda is the physician responsible for care at Gateway Midwest Healthcare. He trained in anesthesiology and interventional pain medicine, and he treats patients in both Missouri and Illinois.

How he approaches pain

Most pain practices treat the place that hurts. That works for an acute injury and fails for anything that has lasted months, because by then the problem is rarely confined to one joint or one disc. A pain signal that will not switch off is being maintained by something — poor sleep, unstable blood sugar, chronic inflammation, deconditioning, or a nervous system that has learned to amplify.

So patients here get asked about things that seem unrelated to a back injury. That is deliberate. Treating the structural problem while ignoring what is feeding it is how people end up having the same injection every three months for years.

On opioids

He is direct about this: the goal is to get people off opioids, not to maintain them. Read the full opioid stewardship policy.

Accident and injury patients

At the Natural Bridge Road office the largest share of the practice is accident and injury care — people hurt in crashes, falls and at work — alongside comprehensive pain management for patients whose pain has become chronic.