Ketamine is a powerful anesthetic that stops pain messages from traveling along your nerves to your brain. Boston Pain Clinic in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, offers IV ketamine infusions for treatment-resistant pain. If you’re suffering from chronic pain that isn’t responding to other therapies, call Boston Pain Clinic to find out more or request an appointment online today.
Ketamine is an anesthetic drug that’s been in widespread use for surgical purposes for many years.
Anesthetists use ketamine to control pain during surgery, as it prevents communication between your peripheral nerves (the nerves distributed around your body) and your brain. With this communication disrupted, you don’t feel pain.
Ketamine also affects the chemical messengers known as neurotransmitters in your brain. Neurotransmitters affect your mood, and an imbalance is one of the main factors in mental health disorders like depression. In turn, depression and chronic pain often go hand-in-hand.
The combination of ketamine’s effects on your neurotransmitters with its pain-blocking properties makes ketamine a valuable drug for people with chronic pain. Research also indicates that ketamine has the additional benefit of possessing anti-inflammatory properties.
Intravenous (IV) ketamine infusions are treatments Boston Pain Clinic uses for patients with treatment-resistant chronic pain. They use the IV drip to deliver your ketamine infusion directly into your bloodstream.
Your provider begins chronic pain treatment with the least invasive methods, such as physical therapy, massage therapy, dry needling, and oral medication. The next stage is using treatments like trigger point and steroid injections.
If your pain still isn’t improving, IV ketamine is an effective alternative to invasive surgical procedures.
IV ketamine infusions are an in-office procedure at Boston Pain Clinic. Your provider carefully inserts a needle into a vein in your arm, which they attach to the IV line. The infusion is a fluid that slowly drips through the line and into your bloodstream.
Your IV ketamine infusion session should last around an hour. While the infusion takes place, you can read, use your tablet or laptop, or simply relax in the peaceful surroundings.
Once the infusion is complete, you stay for a while so your provider can ensure you don’t have any adverse effects from your treatment. Some patients experience visual disturbances, sensory changes, and sleepiness when they have ketamine infusions.
For optimal benefit, Boston Pain Clinic usually administers several IV ketamine infusions at intervals of 3-4 days.
Learn more about IV ketamine infusions and how they could reduce your treatment-resistant chronic pain by calling Boston Pain Clinic today. You can also request a chronic pain consultation using the online booking feature.