Low dose ketamine infusions as a therapy for the treatment of depression is slowly becoming a more mainstream concept. There have been several recent reports in the media profiling the type of patient successes that we here at Evexia Wellness Centers have seen regularly. Less well-known is ketamine’s effectiveness in treating several pain syndromes, including migraine headaches.
How can ketamine help with migraines?
There are hospital in-patient services and hospital emergency rooms that have already employed ketamine infusions for several years to treat intractable migraine headaches. Recently, Dr. Eric Schwenk, the Director of Orthopedic Anesthesia at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, PA, and colleagues completed a retrospective study to ascertain the effectiveness of ketamine in this population. All sixty-one patients studied received daily low-dose ketamine infusions for three to seven consecutive days.
Almost 75 percent of the patients experienced an improvement in their migraine intensity. On a scale of 0 – 10, the average migraine headache pain rating at admission was 7.5, compared to 3.4 at discharge. The average infusion was 5.1 consecutive days. The infusion day with the lowest average pain rating was day 4.
This study’s focus was on short-term relief. The author is encouraged by the potential for ketamine infusions to provide long-term relief.
