Ketamine Enhances Analgesia and Mood in Chronic Pain Patients

Chronic pain is usually associated with psychological and mood disorders. Many chronic pain patients have various forms of mood abnormalities; and these mood issues may improve with better analgesia produced by Ketamine injections.

This is a prospective observational study of consenting adult patients who are undergoing interventional pain management. The patients undergo routine interventional pain therapy using Ketamine injections. Pre-injection and post-injection patient data is collected using validated tools. Data collection includes patients' age, psychiatric diagnosis, pain score, sleep score, anxiety score and depression score.

Pain score is measured using the numeric pain rating scale, and a change in the pain score by 2-points is considered significant. Sleep score is measured using the Likert sleep scale, and a change in the sleep score by 2-points is considered significant. Anxiety is measured using the general anxiety disorder (GAD-7) scale, and a change in the anxiety score by 4-points is considered significant. Depression is measured using the patient health questionnaire (PHQ-9) scale, and a change in the depression score by 5-points is considered significant.

Data is analyzed with IBM® SPSS® Statistics 25; using Student's t-test, ANOVA, Pearson Chi-square test, and regression analysis. P-value <0.05 is considered significant.

Inclusion criteria

• adult chronic pain patients
• associated mood disorder
• good treatment compliance
• associated chronic insomnia
• regular ketamine pain therapy injection
• consent for clinical record quality assurance review

Exclusion criteria

• severe cognitive disorder
• inability to provide consent
• major neuropsychiatric disorder
• cannabis use
• stimulant use
• substance abuse
• poor treatment compliance
• lack of ketamine pain therapy injection