• Pain Med · Feb 2012

    Efficacy of outpatient ketamine infusions in refractory chronic pain syndromes: a 5-year retrospective analysis.

    • Sheetal Patil and Magdalena Anitescu.
    • Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, University of Chicago Medical Center, 5841 S.Maryland Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
    • Pain Med. 2012 Feb 1; 13 (2): 263-9.

    ObjectiveWe evaluated whether outpatient intravenous ketamine infusions were satisfactory for pain relief in patients suffering from various chronic intractable pain syndromes.DesignRetrospective chart review.Setting And PatientsFollowing Institutional Review Board approval, we retrospectively analyzed our database for all ketamine infusions administered over 5 years from 2004 to 2009.Outcome Measures  Data reviewed included doses of intravenous ketamine, infusion duration, pain scores on visual analog scale (VAS) pre- and post-procedure, long-term pain relief, previous interventions, and side effects. All patients were pretreated with midazolam and ondansetron.Results  We identified 49 patients undergoing 369 outpatient ketamine infusions through retrospective analysis. We excluded 36 infusions because of missing data. Among our patients, 18 (37%) had a diagnosis of complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). Of the remaining 31 (63%) patients, eight had refractory headaches and seven had severe back pain. All patients reported significant reduction in VAS score of 5.9 (standard error [SE] 0.35). For patients with CRPS, reduction in VAS score was 7.2 (SE 0.51, P < 0.001); for the others, the reduction was 5.1 (SE 0.40, P < 0.001). The difference of 2.1 between groups was statistically significant (SE 0.64, P = 0.002). In 29 patients, we recorded the duration of pain relief. Using the Bernoulli model, we found (90% confidence interval) that the probability of lasting pain relief in patients with refractory pain states was 59-85% (23-51% relief over 3 weeks).ConclusionsWe conclude that in patients with severe refractory pain of multiple etiologies, subanesthetic ketamine infusions may improve VAS scores. In half of our patients, relief lasted for up to 3 weeks with minimal side effects.Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    This article appears in the collection: Ketamine infusions.

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…