RESEARCH ARTICLE
Use of Ketamine in Ameliorating Opioid Withdrawal Symptoms During an Induction Phase of Buprenorphine
Sota Omoigui*, Fahad Hashmat, Zeudi Bernardo
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2011Volume: 4
First Page: 1
Last Page: 3
Publisher ID: TOPAINJ-4-1
DOI: 10.2174/1876386301104010001
Article History:
Received Date: 18/05/2011Revision Received Date: 14/06/2011
Acceptance Date: 14/06/2011
Electronic publication date: 17/8/2011
Collection year: 2010
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Ketamine can be used in the treatment of opioid withdrawal symptoms. Here are two case discussions of treatment of withdrawal symptoms in opioid dependent patients undergoing detoxification. Our case reports endorse the hypothesis that N-methyl D-aspartate (NMDA) antagonists may selectively inhibit the expression of opiate withdrawal. The use of intravenous ketamine can be considered as a bridge to successful initiation of buprenorphine to wean the patient off from high opioid doses while providing adequate analgesia during the transition period.