Seen articles stating it caused measurable damage in young and infant test animals brains. Would this data most likely be true for young children as well? Are the alternative drugs available for anesthesia safer? How does the age of the child effect the safety and long term effects? as well as dosage and number of times administered?
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N&PD Moderators: Skorpio
The effects of anesthetic ketamine on young children
- Thread starter Armaros
- Start date
sekio
Bluelight Crew
Occasional use of ketamine for emergency anesthesia shouldn't be a concern. Most damage is observed in chronic usage (e.g. abuse).
It would help if you posted some of these articles.How about 3 seperate days in 1 week, where the child age 18 months is dosed at least 2 times per session. I'm not very knowledgeable on the subject but I know what ketamine is and the idea of giving it to a child multiple times in a week just to change some bandages and apply some ointment seems ridiculous to me.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17312200 http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/105/suppl_1/i61.long
sekio
Bluelight Crew
I do agree that putting kids out with ketamine on the regular is probably not good for them. In fact, having to have surgery at all is probably developmentally disruptive, anesthesia or no anesthesia. As you can see from the first study you linked, almost all anesthetics are suspected to be bad for you in some way, but it's the lesser of two evils. Making children experience intense pain and anxiety is not good for them developmentally, either, so we make temporary trade-offs.
It's situational though. If I was staffing a pediatric burn ward I'd want to keep them numb rather than in blinding pain. If it's a baby with a boo-boo on his elbow, that's different...
blueberries
Bluelighter
I wish I had ketamine as a kid...