Ketamine Abreaction - Two Case Reports

Ketamine is a rapid acting parentrally administered non barbiturate anaesthetic agent with minimum cardio respiratory depressant effect as compared to others (Paul et al 1982). It is in clinical use for more than ten years and used safely in aged and critically ill patients (Lorhan & Limppman 1971, Barson and Aren 1974). In sub-anaesthetic doses it has been safely used to produce obstetrical analgesia (Janeczko et al 1974). But the unpremedicated patients experience a dream like state. Since, it can be administered intramuscularly and is safer than thiopentone, we thought of using Ketamine as an alternative to thiopentone for narcoanalysis. We report in this paper our findings of abreaction effect of Ketamine on two cases.