Phase 4 Study of Prevention of Persistent Postsurgical Pain After Thoracotomy Using Ketamine

Chronic pain is a frequent complication after common surgical procedures such as amputation, mastectomy or thoracotomy. A rate between 20 and 60% of patients undergoing thoracotomy are reported to develop long-lasting pain.

The causes of chronic pain after surgery are not fully known but several risk factors have been identified including pre and postoperative pain, nerve injury during surgery and physicological and genetic factors. The observed symptoms of allodynia and hyperalgesia in the periincisional area and evidence of intercostal nerve injury due to rib retraction during surgery suggest a neuropathic aetiology.

Excitatory neurotransmitters, acting through N-metil-aspartate receptor, have been recently postulated to play an important role in the development and maintenance of pathologic pain states. In experimental pain research, NMDA receptor antagonists reduced wind-up and central sensitization. Ketamine is one of the few NMDA antagonists available in clinical practice that, administered at subanesthetic doses, would inhibit the spinal processing of nociceptive input.

It has been proposed that analgesic drugs might more adequately prevent central sensitization when administered during the entire period of high-intensity noxious stimulation.

Therefore, the investigators hypothesized that continuous ketamine infusion would potentiate epidural ropivacaine and fentanyl-induced analgesia after posterolateral thoracotomy or minithoracotomy, reduce periincisional hyperalgesia and long-term postoperative pain. To test these hypothesis, the investigators administered a low dose of intravenous or epidural ketamine or placebo to patients who received an epidural infusion of ropivacaine and fentanyl for postthoracotomy pain.