Does a Single Intravenous Dose of Ketamine Reduce the Need for Supplemental Opioids in Post-Cesarean Section Patients?
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT00486902. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
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Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
Pain control after cesarean delivery is associated with improved breastfeeding and infant rooming-in times. In addition, inadequate analgesia leads to elevated plasma catecholamine concentrations, which negatively affect every organ system. There is growing evidence that ketamine, N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist, is efficacious when used as an adjuvant in postoperative pain control. A 2006 Cochrane Collaboration systemic review and meta-analysis concluded, "Ketamine in subanesthetic doses….is effective in reducing morphine requirements in the first 24 hours after surgery." Ketamine's prolonged analgesic effect, despite its short half-life and its use in low doses, is theorized to be due to blockade of spinal cord central sensitization. Central sensitization is a phenomenon whereby repeated painful stimulus leads to more severe pain perception over time despite no change in the intensity of the painful stimulus.Ketamine may also prevent the development of acute opioid tolerance. Ketamine's analgesic effects have also demonstrated in the obstetric population. Post-cesarean delivery morphine requirements in women who received ketamine as part of a general anesthesia technique were decreased. Similary, low-dose ketamine in conjunction with bupivacaine-only spinal anesthesia reduced postoperative analgesic requirements compared to bupivacaine-only spinal anesthesia and bupivacaine-fentanyl spinal anesthesia. In the United States, healthy women scheduled for elective cesarean delivery commonly receive spinal anesthesia with bupivacaine-fentanyl-morphine. To our knowledge, IV ketamine has not been studied as an adjuvant to this regimen in the analgesic management in post-cesarean delivery patients. Multimodal therapy for postoperative pain control is widely practiced due to the advantage it provides in blocking multiple pain pathways while minimizing side effects of each individual pain medication. We hypothesize that low dose intravenous ketamine will improve multi-modal post-cesarean analgesia compared to placebo. The purpose of this study is to evaluate this hypothesis and study the possible side effects of this regimen in combination with bupivacaine-fentanyl-morphine spinal anesthesia.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT00486902
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- 188 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 18 Years to 60 Years
- Sex
- Female
- Healthy volunteers
- Healthy volunteers not accepted
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Jun 30, 2006
- Primary completion
- Sep 30, 2008
- Completion
- Sep 30, 2008
- Last update posted
- Apr 13, 2014
2006 – 2008
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northwestern University | Chicago | Illinois | 60611 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT00486902, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Apr 13, 2014 · Synced Sep 5, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT00486902 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.