Conditions: Postoperative Pain
Keywords: Ketamine Postoperative pain Opioid dependent patients Acute pain control
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 64
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
Patients who are dependent on opioids often have poor pain relief after major surgery. This study tests the hypothesis that adding intravenous ketamine to a postoperative regimen of intravenous opioids for postoperative pain will improve pain relief in this subset of patients.

Detailed description:

Arms:
arm 1: Participants received postoperative hydromorphone patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) and continuous ketamine (0.2 mg/kg/hour). Ketamine is being compared to the use of placebo, in addition to intravenous opioids, for postop pain control in opioid dependent patients who undergo major surgery. arm 2: Participants received postoperative hydromorphone PCA and continuous ketamine-matching placebo (infusion of saline).

Interventions: intervention 1: Ketamine intervention 2: Placebo intervention 3: Hydromorphone PCA
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Intravenous (IV) ketamine 0.2 mg/kg/hr for 24-48 hours postoperatively. intervention 2: Patients who received ketamine-matching placebo were given saline infusions intervention 3: Intravenous hydromorphone PCA

Protocol document: