↓ Skip to main content

Subanesthetic ketamine infusions for the treatment of children and adolescents with chronic pain: a longitudinal study

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Pediatrics, December 2015
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (89th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (85th percentile)

Mentioned by

blogs
2 blogs
twitter
2 X users
facebook
3 Facebook pages

Readers on

mendeley
133 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
Subanesthetic ketamine infusions for the treatment of children and adolescents with chronic pain: a longitudinal study
Published in
BMC Pediatrics, December 2015
DOI 10.1186/s12887-015-0515-4
Pubmed ID
Authors

Kathy A. Sheehy, Elena A. Muller, Caroline Lippold, Mehdi Nouraie, Julia C. Finkel, Zenaide M N Quezado

Abstract

Chronic pain is common in children and adolescents and is often associated with severe functional disability and mood disorders. The pharmacological treatment of chronic pain in children and adolescents can be challenging, ineffective, and is mostly based on expert opinions and consensus. Ketamine, an N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist, has been used as an adjuvant for treatment of adult chronic pain and has been shown, in some instances, to improve pain and decrease opioid-requirement. We examined the effects of subanesthetic ketamine infusions on pain intensity and opioid use in children and adolescents with chronic pain syndromes treated in an outpatient setting. Longitudinal cohort study of consecutive pediatric patients treated with subanesthetic ketamine infusions in a tertiary outpatient center. Outcome measurements included self-reported pain scores (numeric rating scale) and morphine-equivalent intake. Over a 15-month period, 63 children and adolescents (median age 15, interquartile range 12-17 years) with chronic pain received 277 ketamine infusions. Intravenous administration of subanesthetic doses of ketamine to children and adolescents on an outpatient basis was safe and not associated with psychotropic effects or hemodynamic perturbations. Overall, ketamine significantly reduced pain intensity (p <0.001) and yielded greater pain reduction in patients with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) than in patients with other chronic pain syndromes (p = 0.029). Ketamine-associated reductions in pain scores were the largest in postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and trauma patients and the smallest in patients with chronic headache (p = 0.007). In 37 % of infusions, patients had a greater than 20 % reduction in pain score. Conversely, ketamine infusions did not change overall morphine-equivalent intake (p = 0.3). These data suggest that subanesthetic ketamine infusion is feasible in an outpatient setting and may benefit children and adolescents with chronic pain. Further, patients with CRPS, POTS, and a history of trauma-related chronic pain are more likely to benefit from this therapeutic modality.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 2 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 133 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Denmark 1 <1%
Unknown 132 99%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Other 24 18%
Researcher 13 10%
Student > Master 13 10%
Student > Doctoral Student 13 10%
Student > Bachelor 12 9%
Other 27 20%
Unknown 31 23%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 55 41%
Psychology 8 6%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 6 5%
Nursing and Health Professions 5 4%
Neuroscience 5 4%
Other 19 14%
Unknown 35 26%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 14. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 04 December 2020.
All research outputs
#2,377,377
of 23,577,654 outputs
Outputs from BMC Pediatrics
#322
of 3,111 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#41,066
of 390,907 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Pediatrics
#7
of 48 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,577,654 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 89th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,111 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.8. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 390,907 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 48 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 85% of its contemporaries.