The Ketamine for Acute Postoperative Analgesia (KAPA) Trial

About This Study

Postoperative pain remains an important challenge for both patients and clinicians. Despite advances in pain management techniques, many patients continue to describe their pain as moderate to severe immediately after surgery. Poor postoperative pain control is associated with increased morbidity, functional impairment, and higher health care costs. While opioids currently represent the mainstay of treating surgical pain, their use is associated with significant side effects including respiratory depression, delayed recovery of bowel function as well as the potential for long-term use. Therefore, there is an urgent need to find new pain relievers with a safer side effect profiles. One such drug that has been receiving increasing attention is ketamine. Previous studies have focused on using intravenous ketamine postoperatively which requires a monitored setting but have ignored the oral form. By using the oral route of administration, ketamine could potentially be used by patients in a less resource-intensive manner with similar efficacy. Therefore, Investigators propose to conduct the Ketamine for Acute Postoperative Analgesia (KAPA) pilot study to examine the role of oral ketamine in improving recovery after spine surgery.

Conditions Studied

Interventions

• •Ketamine
• •Placebo

Eligibility

Inclusion criteria

1. Patients aged 18-75 undergoing multi-level lumbar fusion and decompression
2. Planned overnight admission to hospital

Exclusion criteria

1. Patients taking greater than 90 milligram morphine equivalents
2. History of substance use disorder
3. Previous surgery within six months
4. Pre-existing renal or liver impairment
5. Chronic benzodiazepine use
6. Psychiatric disorder with current/active pharmacologic treatment
7. Inability to complete questionnaires

Study Locations (1)