What's The Right Ketamine Infusion Dose?
A couple of questions we get asked often are, "What is the calculation that you use for dosing ketamine? What’s the right dose for the infusion?” The answer as you can imagine is, “It Depends.” Read on to learn more.
Ketamine Dosing For Mood Disorders
The dose that we start with at Reset Ketamine is 0.5mg/kg for mood disorders, so that includes depression, PTSD, anxiety, OCD. Of course, this is not absolute. For some of our patients, we may actually start at a lower dose, because they may be sensitive to ketamine, such as in our patients that are older or younger.
Learn more about dosing and depression here at our Standard vs. High Dose Ketamine infusion for Treatment-Resistant Depression blog post
Ketamine Dosing for Pain Disorders
In regards to pain disorders, such as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), Trigeminal Neuralgia, or Fibromyalgia, we usually start at a higher dose of ketamine and infuse for a longer period of time. At this time, there is no standard, one-standard dose for pain. So it will really depend on the specific pain syndrome we are treating after assessing how sensitive the patient may be to ketamine. In general, it is better to start at a lower dose and gradually titrate up rather than starting at a high dose and having a bad reaction whether that's anxiety or abnormalities in the vital signs.
Learn more about ketamine and chronic pain here at our New Evidence For Ketamine Infusions For Chronic Pain blog post
Customizing The Ketamine Dose For Each Patient
Each patient is treated as an individual. As outlined above we have guidelines from which we start with and then tailor the dose based on the patient’s experience during the infusion and how they feel afterwards. Traditionally there is an increasing dose trend for subsequent infusions, however, we have also found that more does not mean “better.” Sometimes there is a cumulative or additive effect that we notice, meaning it is not about how much you give at each infusion, but rather the fact that the patient has received multiple ketamine infusions. Sometimes we also see that after several infusions, patients don’t require as much ketamine to get the same effect and benefits. At the end of the day, at Reset Ketamine we custom-tailor the dosing to each patient.
A couple of question that we get asked often are, "What is the calculation that you use for dosing ketamine? What’s the right dose for the infusion?” The answer as you can imagine is, “It Depends.” Read on to learn more.