Ketamine Infusions
Interventional Pain Medicine in Knoxville, TN
Chronic pain defies standard medical treatment, making every day a challenge for those who struggle with pain conditions from fibromyalgia to cancer. When you think you’ve reached the end of all possible treatments, one more option remains ketamine infusions. The team at Pain Medicine of the South, located in Knoxville, Tennessee, specializes in helping patients find immediate and long-term pain relief with ketamine therapy. To learn whether ketamine infusions can help you, call the office or request an appointment online today.
Ketamine is an anesthetic medication that has been used during surgery for decades. It’s known to be one of the safest anesthetics, so safe that it’s often recommended for children’s surgery.
When administered in a low dose, called a subanesthetic dose, ketamine becomes a highly effective pain reliever. In addition to alleviating your pain, ketamine is also fast acting, which makes it beneficial for both acute and chronic pain.
The medication’s pain-relieving effect tends to last long after it’s eliminated from your body. This longer-lasting relief occurs as ketamine improves nerve connections in your brain.
Ketamine therapy can relieve pain throughout your body because it targets areas of your brain that are involved in relaying pain messages. As ketamine blocks these areas, called NMDA receptors, it stops nerve signals that travel from the brain to make you feel the pain.
Ketamine is especially beneficial for relieving pain nerve damage causes, but it’s used for many pain conditions, including:
This pain-relieving medication is also a highly effective option for treating fibromyalgia.
Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition that causes body-wide pain in your muscles and soft tissues. Although the severity of pain varies for each patient, it often becomes debilitating. Patients with fibromyalgia also experience extreme fatigue, depression, and cognitive problems like difficulty concentrating.
The widespread pain fibromyalgia causes is associated with NMDA receptors, meaning you may finally obtain pain relief with ketamine therapy. Most, but not all, patients participating in studies experienced significant pain relief following ketamine infusions.
Ketamine is administered through an intravenous (IV) infusion. You’ll achieve optimal pain relief when low doses of ketamine are slowly infused.
Your ketamine therapy is customized according to your needs and the severity of your pain. At the start, most patients receive a series of IV infusions. After that, you may need occasional infusions to maintain the effect.
Studies show that it’s possible for pain relief to last up to three months after you finish the initial phase of ketamine treatment.
If you suffer from chronic pain despite other treatments, ketamine may help. Call the Pain Medicine of the South or request an appointment online today.