Low-Dose Ketamine Aids Chronic Refractory Pain

MONDAY, Oct. 20, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Low-dose ketamine for chronic refractory pain shows therapeutic benefit and high tolerability, according to a study published online Oct. 5 in Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine.

Hallie Tankha, Ph.D., from the Cleveland Clinic, and colleagues evaluated preliminary effectiveness and rate of treatment completion for a standardized low-dose ketamine infusion therapy (KIT) for patients with chronic refractory pain. The analysis included 1,034 adult patients receiving KIT between May 2021 and October 2024 at an outpatient multidisciplinary pain clinic.

The researchers found that treatment completion was high (86.1 percent), with patients completing five or more infusions, with no adverse events reported. Baseline measures showed moderate impairment for pain interference, global physical health, fatigue, physical function, and depression, with 20.3 to 46.4 percent of patients achieving clinically meaningful improvement on patient-reported outcomes from baseline to last infusion. While there were statistically significant mean improvements seen across multiple domains, the majority of individual outcomes did not reach clinically meaningful thresholds. Patients showed significant mean improvements in fatigue, pain interference, and social role satisfaction (mean change, −2.1, −2.0, and 2.0, respectively), with improvements in depression, social role satisfaction, pain interference, self-efficacy, global health, and pain catastrophizing sustained through six months posttreatment.

“I”m encouraged by treatments that can be integrated into comprehensive care approaches, and this study demonstrates ketamine can be safely and effectively implemented in pain management settings,” Tankha said in a statement.

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