Ketamine may relieve migraines
Commonly used as an anesthetic, for pain relief and increasingly for depression, ketamine may help alleviate migraine pain in patients who have not been helped by other treatments, suggests new research.
The study of 61 patients found that almost 75% experienced an improvement in their migraine intensity after a three- to seven-day course of inpatient treatment with ketamine.
“Ketamine may hold promise as a treatment for migraine headaches in patients who have failed other treatments,” said study co-author Dr Eric Schwenk, director of Orthopedic Anesthesia at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, USA. “Our study focused only on short-term relief, but it is encouraging that this treatment might have the potential to help patients long term. Our work provides the basis for future, prospective studies that involve larger numbers of patients.”
The researchers reviewed data for patients who received ketamine infusions for intractable migraine headaches — migraines that have failed all other therapies. On a scale of 0–10, the average migraine headache pain rating at admission was 7.5, compared with 3.4 on discharge. The average length of infusion was 5.1 days, and the day of lowest pain ratings was day 4. Adverse effects were generally mild.
Dr Schwenk said while his hospital uses ketamine to treat intractable migraines, the treatment is not yet widely available. Thomas Jefferson University Hospital will soon be opening a new infusion centre that will treat more patients with headaches using ketamine. “We hope to expand its use to both more patients and more conditions in the future,” he said.
“Due to the retrospective nature of the study, we cannot definitively say that ketamine is entirely responsible for the pain relief, but we have provided a basis for additional larger studies to be undertaken,” Dr Schwenk added.
The study results are being presented at the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ ANESTHESIOLOGY 2017 annual conference.
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