EDITORIAL

Ketamine

Ketamine is a safe, effective, and appropriate technique for emergency department paediatric procedural sedation

S M Green¹, B Krauss²

¹ Department of Emergency Medicine, Loma Linda University Medical Center and Children’s Hospital, Loma Linda, California, USA
² The Division of Emergency Medicine, Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr S M Green
Loma Linda University Medical Center A-108, 11234 Anderson Street, Loma Linda, CA 92354, USA; stevegreen@tarascon.com

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Ketamine has an important role in the management of acutely injured children

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Keywords: ketamine; paediatrics; sedation

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Three reports in this issue of the journal substantively advance the status of ketamine for paediatric procedural sedation in the emergency department (ED). McGlone et al¹ and Ellis et al² report a total of 590 ketamine administrations, together noting a high level of sedation efficacy, strong degrees of parental and staff satisfaction, and an adverse effect profile readily manageable by trained emergency physicians. In a third report, Howes³ capably reviews the now abundant literature supporting the safety of this dissociative sedative technique.

These reports are entirely consistent with many previous ED series from the United Kingdom^4–7 and elsewhere^8–18 reporting the safety of ketamine in literally thousands of children. The exceptional track record for this drug in various non-ED settings has also been well reported.¹⁹

Ketamine is now widely accepted as a standard of care for ED paediatric procedural sedation in the United States.^8–22 The unique dissociative state induced by . . . [Full text of this article]

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• Conway, M., White, N., Jean, C. St., Zempsky, W. T., Steven, K. (2009). Use of Continuous Intravenous Ketamine for End-Stage Cancer Pain in Children. Journal of Pediatric Oncology Nursing 26: 100-106 [Abstract]  
• Gunning, M D G, Perkins, Z, Quinn, T (2008). Authors' response. Emerg. Med. J. 25: 619-619 [Full Text]  
• American Academy of Pediatrics, , American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, , Cote, C. J., Wilson, S., the Work Group on Sedation, (2006). Guidelines for Monitoring and Management of Pediatric Patients During and After Sedation for Diagnostic and Therapeutic Procedures: An Update. Pediatrics 118: 2587-2602 [Abstract] [Full Text]