IV KETAMINE
INFUSION
Services
OUTPATIENT INFUSION KETAMINE
Ketamine hydrochloride is a medication that has traditionally been used for anesthesia, but at very low doses, ketamine has recently emerged as a promising new treatment for major depressive disorder or for severe depressive episodes associated with anxiety, chronic pain, bipolar disorder, cyclic vomiting syndrome, and/or PTSD that have not responded to conventional treatments.
Ketamine infusion treatments work differently than traditional antidepressants or pain medications. For many patients, depression, anxiety, and PTSD come from a part of the brain that is also involved with processing pain. Traditional antidepressants and pain medicines do not affect that part of the brain. Ketamine infusion treatments block specific receptors in the parts of the brain that processes pain and mood. Specifically, ketamine works on the central nervous system by partially blocking a receptor system called the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (also known as the NMDA receptor).
In 2015, The American Psychiatric Association Council of Research published a literature review of 7 placebo controlled, randomized clinical studies on ketamine hydrochloride IV infusion therapy in the treatment of depression, comprising 147 treated patients in total.
The American Psychiatric Association found that the meta analysis of all the gold standard research to date provided “compelling evidence that the antidepressant effects of ketamine infusion are both rapid and robust, albeit transient.”1 Many patients find that the effects are not transient at all, and that the effect from a series of treatments can last to reduce depressive symptoms for weeks, months or longer.
Among patients who have tried for months and years with traditional antidepressants, ketamine infusion treatments have been shown to create significant relief within 4 to 72 hours of the first treatment.