Early and effective use of ketamine for treatment of phantom limb pain

Treatment for phantom limb pain is difficult and challenging. There is often suboptimum treatment with fewer than 10% receiving lasting relief. Treatments based broadly on other neuropathic pains may not be appropriate for a clinical success. We report a case of phantom limb pain, which proved resistant to multiple analgesics, including opioids and continuous epidural blockade. Treatment with intravenous (IV) ketamine as an alternate day infusion, gave complete remission of phantom limb pain. This demonstrates an early and effective use of a potent NMDA antagonist for treatment of phantom limb pain. Mechanisms underlying phantom limb pain are briefly discussed.

• Publication year

  2010

• Venue

  Indian Journal of Anaesthesia

• Publication date

  2010-03-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.4103/0019-5049.63632PMID 20661356PMCID 2900744
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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