Special-K Might Be The Perfect Drug For ER Patients

Ketamine—a drug known for making rave kids comatose and tranquilizing horses—is apparently also the perfect sedative for emergency room patients with injuries or critical illness needing quick life-saving procedures, despite past fears about its safety.

According to a medical study produced by the Department of Emergency Medicine at Vancouver General Hospital in Vancouver, the drug popularized by K-holes the world over is totally safe to use as a painkiller or sedation for "rapid sequence intubation in critically ill patients."

“Emergency physicians’ reluctance to use ketamine is based on case reports and case control studies—published more than 40 years ago—suggesting that ketamine increases intracranial pressure,” said the study produced by a selection of University of British Columbia researchers. “Yet North American emergency physicians have been reluctant to adopt its use when incubating critically ill patients with undifferentiated pathology.”

Previously, the researchers say the pervasive studies on ketamine overstated the drug as dangerously increasing intracranial pressure, when in fact they found refuting evidence.

“A previous narrative review on ketamine suggested that the increases in mean arterial pressure and possible increases in cerebral perfusion pressures,” said the study. Instead they say their systematic review of medical studies "found no significant effect of ketamine on cerebral perfusion pressure” or increase in intracranial pressure when the drug was deployed in patients.

Moreover, the researchers found that ketamine didn't increase the possibility for negative “neurologic outcomes” or death, as “compared with other intravenous induction agents.”

The researchers also found that ketamine should be considered over etomidate, a drug often used by physicians in some emergency situations instead of Special K. But in the past decade, researchers noted, the concerns surrounding etomidate reemerged, linking the drug with transient adrenal dysfunction, something ketamine doesn't cause.

In the study, ketamine, the same party drug high schoolers everywhere are tripping on at house parties, was compared to sufentanil, remifentanil, and fentanyl and held up against all of them as a safe alternative.

After reviewing 192 medical articles related to ketamine, the researchers at the Vancouver hospital based their study on 10 papers. They didn't, however, produce their own live trials on patients. Without their own clinical trials to go off of, the researchers say it's critical that future researchers issue their own.

"High-quality, adequately powered, randomized trials comparing induction agents with respect to patient-oriented outcomes are urgently needed to optimize treatment strategies for critically ill patients," said the study.

Helping critically ill patients could mean a new lease on life for ketamine, which is currently considered a controlled substance, illegal to use recreationally. In the end, if I'm in an ER and Special K is the best option to save me, load me up doc, I could care less the government classifies it as a hard drug.