Ariana M. Nelson, MD

• Pain Management Services
• Anesthesia Services

• American Board of Anesthesiology, Anesthesiology
• American Board of Anesthesiology, Pain Medicine

• English
• Spanish

• Associate Professor — Department of Anesthesiology & Perioperative Care, UCI School of Medicine
• Dean's Scholar — UCI School of Medicine
• Member — American Society of Anesthesiologists
• Member — American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine
• Associate Editor — Anesthesia & Analgesia
• Assistant Editor — Pain Medicine

• Physicians of Excellence, Orange County Medical Association — 2021-2023

Dr. Ariana M. Nelson is a board-certified anesthesiologist who specializes in interventional pain management, as well as in acute and chronic pain.

Her clinical interests include back, neck, joint, neck and neuropathic pain. She also is skilled in radiofrequency ablation, peripheral nerve stimulation and spinal cord stimulation.

She earned a medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor. She completed a residency in anesthesiology and a fellowship in multidisciplinary pain management at the Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Nelson's research interests include aerospace medicine and exploring the medical capabilities and resources needed for space exploration. She is working with NASA on the upcoming Artemis expeditions for lunar orbital and surface missions. She also studies objective measurements of pain, opioid-related side effects, substance-use disorder and how cannabis may be used to alleviate pain. She has contributed to many book chapters on pain medicine and serves on the editorial boards of the journals Anesthesia & Analgesia and Pain Medicine.

In fall 2021, she was named one of 12 Dean's Scholars, a select group of UCI School of Medicine faculty members charged with implementing initiatives to advance the training and assessment of medical students' clinical skills and develop the next generation of medical education scholars and national leaders. She is also a core faculty member for the Program in Medical Education for the Latino Community (PRIME-LC), a five-year, combined MD and master’s training program for physicians committed to serving under-resourced Latino communities.

Nelson, who speaks fluent Spanish, strives to improve her patients' quality of life with state-of-the art pain management therapies and the use of non-opioid medications.

She sees patients in Orange, Irvine and Tustin.

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