Clinical Information

The clinical rationale is that pairing a potent short-acting opioid with a sub-dissociative dose of ketamine allows meaningful analgesia at lower opioid exposure than opioid alone. Two separate kinds of evidence support that. In the adult controlled trial, matched on measured drug exposure, the combination delivered analgesia comparable to sufentanil alone at approximately 2.7-fold lower sufentanil exposure. In the pediatric registry, an observational record of routine care, median sufentanil doses were 38 percent lower when S-ketamine was added. The first is an exposure-controlled finding; the second is an observed dosing pattern.