Ketamine in Acute Abdominal Pain in Patients with Lead Poisoning

: Introduction: In this study, we investigated the effect of intravenous ketamine administration on acute abdominal pain in lead poisoning patients. Methods: In this cross sectional study, we evaluated 20 patients with opium abuse with acute abdominal pain due to lead poisoning. With cardiac monitoring, 0.25 mg/kg ketamine (maximum dose was considered as 20 milligrams) was administered during 30 to 60 seconds. To control ketamine complications such as psychological irritability 0.03 mg/kg midazolam (2 milligrams was considered as maximum dose) was injected slowly during one or two minutes. Patients were observed in the ED for the next 6 hours. Pain score was assessed with VAS method, serially. Pain was measured before ketamine administration, every one hour for the next two hours and every two hours for four hours. Results: In this study 20 patients were enrolled with mean age of 37.2 ± 4.2 years (range from 30 to 44 yrs.). Repeated measurement test shows significant reduce in pain score after ketamine administration (P=0.001). Five patients report no pain 4 hours after ketamine injection, and 3 of them left the hospital with personal consent before the end of the study. From 17 remaining patients, 13 ones (76.4%) had no pain, and mean VAS score in other 4 patients was less than 2 after4 6 hours. Conclusion: our results show that low dose ketamine administration can reduce abdominal pain related to lead poisoning in opium abusers.