Intranasal (IN) ketamine may be a safe and effective alternative to intravenous opioids for acute pain in adult patients, new research suggests.
In a systematic literature review of 15 studies that included 2218 adult patients, IN ketamine was associated with improved pain scores.
Dr Anne Hermon
"While covering the acute pain service, myself and my co-author, Dr Nadkarni [Anisha Nadkarni, MD] noticed how effective intravenous ketamine was in treating acute postoperative pain, even in adult patients with chronic pain who were not opioid naive," study investigator Anne Hermon, MD, Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, told Medscape Medical News.
"We knew ketamine has multiple routes of administration and wanted to identify whether intranasal ketamine could prove to be a safe and effective alternative to opioids. We did a basic literature search and found that IN ketamine has been used to treat acute pain in multiple settings and patient populations, and we wanted to do a more extensive review," she added.
The findings were presented at the virtual American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) 2021 Annual Meeting.
Early Promise
Using as keywords "ketamine" and "acute pain," the researchers conducted a literature search of three popular medical databases for studies published through June 2020.
