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Ketamine, a medication commonly used for pain relief and increasingly used for depression, may help alleviate migraine pain in patients who have not been helped by other treatments, suggests a study being presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY 2017 annual meeting.
The study of 61 patients found that almost 75 percent experienced an improvement in their migraine intensity after a three- to seven-day course of inpatient treatment with ketamine. The drug is used to induce general anesthesia but also provides powerful pain control for patients with many painful conditions in lower doses than its anesthetic use.
“Ketamine may hold promise as a treatment for migraine headaches in patients who have failed other treatments,” said study co-author Eric Schwenk, M.D., director of orthopedic anesthesia at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. “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.”