Friday, May 25, 2012

Low Dose Ketamine in outpatient knee surgery, Dr. Dong


Erik Dong, D.O.


Article:
Intraoperative Small-Dose Ketamine Enhances Analgesia

After Outpatient Knee Arthroscopy
Christophe Menigaux, MD, Bruno Guignard, MD, Dominique Fletcher, MD,
Daniel I. Sessler, MD, Xavier Dupont, MD, and Marcel Chauvin, MD
(AnesthAnalg 2001;93:606–12)

Summary:
            Ketamine is a NMDA channel blocker that has been increasingly analyzed for its uses within the multimodal approach to preemptive analgesia and post operative narcotic use. This double blinded, randomized study aims to correlate the use of ketamine at the time of induction, to post op pain, necessity for additional pain medication and ability to ambulate in patients undergoing outpatient knee arthroscopy with meniscal repair. Patients were subjected to similar inclusion and exclusion criteria and placed into groups of 25 (control vs ketamine 0.15mg/kg) with similar management of general anesthesia and surgical technique.

            The findings demonstrated that the ketamine experimental group required less post operative morphine in the PACU and less Di-Antalvac (400 mg acetaminophen and 30 mg dextropropoxyphene; Aventis, Inc., Montrouge, France) in the ambulatory setting, further distances with ambulation with minimal to no direct adverse affects attributed to ketamine. Unlike previous ketamine studies, this particular one suggests that ketamine may aid in post operative analgesia for long durations, as its beneficial effects were seen for up to three days post surgery.

            It has been suggested by the authors that ketamine preemptively blocks analgesia by various mechanisms. First it works by prevention of the development of neuronal hyperexcitability within the central nervous system, distinct and independent of peripheral opiod receptors. Another potential method being potentiation and synergism between the NMDA antagonist and NSAIDS. Overall this a well designed study which shows the benefit of small doses of ketamine in a multimodal approach to surgical analgesia.

No comments:

Post a Comment