As a registered nurse, (though not a nurse anesthetist) you couldn’t pay me enough to administer ketamine in a specialized clinic setting, or a hospital setting, for that matter, for pain management, until far more research has been done. While I don’t doubt patients get a remarkable sense of well-being, it’s those “common side effects”, that worry me. Why don’t they just use LSD, instead? Makes about as much sense. Just the remotest chance that it could be psychologically harmful or dangerous, is enough for me to be leery, though Lord knows we need a substitute for opioids, ASAP, since the government (THANKS, Obama!) has now seen fit to take them away from chronic pain patients, who suffer excruciating pain, without adequate pain medication. I have a relative with chronic pain, and one pain specialist after another has informed her that their hands are tied; the government has threatened to take away their licenses, if they do not cut back opioid prescription dosages to next to nothing. (Our government’s way of “solving” the opioid “crisis”, since they can’t or won’t solve the REAL problem -— illegal opioid trafficking and use. Those “decrease in opioid use” figures are going to be impressive, yes?) Anyway, though I will be thrilled when an adequate, safe, inexpensive alternative to opioid pain medication is discovered (or doctors are again to prescribe for their patients as they see fit), ketamine clinics sound like a recipe for disaster. But I’d love to be proven wrong.
I had a friend who took a university study for depression and received a ketamine injection. The important thing is that they are now thinking the glutamate system is the problem, not serotonin. But most current drugs treat serotonin.