Chronic cluster headache (CH) is a rare, highly disabling primary headache condition. As NMDA receptors are possibly overactive in CH, NMDA receptor antagonists, such as ketamine, could be of interest in patients with intractable CH.Read More →
Management of chronic migraine (CM) or new daily persistent headache (NDPH) in those who require aggressive outpatient and inpatient treatment is challenging. Ketamine has been suggested as a new treatment for this intractable population.Read More →
Cluster headaches have an incidence of 1–3 per 10,000 with a 2.5:1 male-to-female gender ratio. Although not life threatening, the impact of the attacks on the individual patient can result in tremendous pain and disability. The pathophysiology of the disease is unclear, but it is known that the hypothalamus, the brainstem, and genetic factors, such as the G1246A polymorphism, play a role. A distinction is made between episodic and chronic cluster headaches. In a controlled setting, we treated 29 patients with cluster headaches (13 with chronic cluster and 16 with the episodic form), who had been refractory to conventional treatments, with a low dose of ketamine (an NMDA receptor antagonist) i.v. over 40 min to one hour every 2 weeks or sooner for up to four times. It was observed that the attacks were completely aborted in 100 % of patients with episodic headaches and in 54 % of patients with chronic cluster headaches for a period of 3–18 months. We postulated neuroplastic brain repair and remodulation as possible mechanisms.Read More →
Neuropathic Pain is a term referred to “pain arising as a direct consequence of a lesion affecting the somatosensory system”. As a first line option, oral medications are mostly used, as they are easily available, relatively safe, and do not need much resources. They include antidepressants in the form of tricyclics, newer selective reuptake inhibitors of serotonin and norepinephrine, gabapentin, pregabalin etc. Although neuropathic pain conditions do share some common clinical features, they are quite diverse when considered individually according to their etiology and pathogenesis. Hence not all patients and not all types of neuropathic pain respond to such oral therapyRead More →
A single sub-anesthetic (intravenous) IV dose of ketamine might have rapid but transient antidepressant effects in patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Here we tested the tolerability, safety, and efficacy of repeated-dose open-label IV ketamine (six infusions over 12 days) in 10 medication-free symptomatic patients with TRD who had previously shown a meaningful antidepressant response to a single dose.Read More →
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome Type 1 (CRPS-1) responds poorly to standard pain treatment. We evaluated if the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist S(+)-ketamine improves pain in CRPS-1 patients. Sixty CRPS-1 patients (48 females) with severe pain participated in a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled parallel-group trial. Patients were given a 4.2-day intravenous infusion of low-dose ketamine (n = 30) or placebo (n = 30) using an individualized stepwise tailoring of dosage based on effect (pain relief) and side effects (nausea/vomiting/psychomimetic effects).Read More →
Ketamine has demonstrated usefulness as an analgesic to treat nonresponsive neuropathic pain; however, it is not widely administered to outpatients due to fear of such side effects as hallucinations and other cognitive disturbances. This retrospective chart review is the first research to study the safety and efficacy of prolonged low-dose, continuous intravenous (IV) or subcutaneous ketamine infusions in noncancer outpatients.Read More →