Combining Ketamine and Propofol (“Ketofol”) for Emergency Department Procedural Sedation and Analgesia: A Review

intrOdUctiOn Emergency physicians must be comfortable and confident in providing safe and effective procedural sedation and analgesia (PSA). Goals of PSA include providing an adequate level of sedation while minimizing pain and anxiety, maximizing amnesia, minimizing the potential for adverse drug-related events, controlling behavior, and maintaining a stable cardiovascular and respiratory status. The ideal pharmacologic agent for PSA would accomplish all of these goals, and would have a quick onset and offset, be safe in all age groups, be inexpensive, and be equally efficacious in multiple routes of administration. Unfortunately, at this time no single agent exists that has all of the aforementioned qualities, so physicians must use combinations of different drugs at varying does to achieve as many of the desired goals as possible. The most recent PSA combination to be described in the literature is that of low-dose ketamine and propofol (“ketofol”). In this article we attempt to describe the postulated benefits of using these two agents together and examine the safety and efficacy of the combination.