A Month’s Supply of Ketamine

This is a highly entertaining, short, qualitative survey of ketamine use in April 2011 at U.C. Davis.  Ketamine is quite popular outside the United States – but hasn’t reached widespread, routine use here.

Specifically, this study looks at “low-dose ketamine” a supplementary analgesia in the Emergency Department.  Usually defined in the range of 0.1mg/kg to 0.3mg/kg, the authors use 0.2mg/kg.  Ketamine was generally efficacious, and adverse events were mild – highly limited by the size of their cohort, a mere 24 patients.  But the entertaining bit are the qualitative patient comments, including:

“I was in a science fiction movie.” 
“I was on TV.”
“I was a hippie.”
“It was pure euphoria.”
“I was scared.”
“I was hot.”

“It made me sleepy.”

“I was itchy.”

 …and many others.

“Low-dose ketamine analgesia: patient and physician experience in the ED”
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23041484