Intravenous Ketamine

Ketamine Therapy Can Help Where Other Treatments Have Failed

Ketamine is a well-researched, dissociative anesthetic that was approved by the FDA in 1970, seeing its first use in the Vietnam War. Since then, ketamine has been used extensively worldwide in the medical field. The World Health Organization lists ketamine as one of the world’s most essential medications due to its therapeutic effects and wide margin of safety.

Over the last decade, Yale University and the National Institutes of Health identified additional benefits of ketamine in treating mood disorders and chronic pain. The use of ketamine for depression has been named “the biggest discovery in mental health in decades.”

Conditions Treated with IV Ketamine

Applying ketamine through intravenous drip allows your body the maximum absorption of ketamine. Ketamine can provide you with rapid relief from your symptoms within days in most cases.

Conditions intravenous ketamine drips are used to treat at KDI Health include the following:

  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Bipolar disorder
  • PTSD

How Does Intravenous Ketamine Work?

Scientific research has highlighted ketamine’s unique ability to treat mood disorders. There is still much to be understood about how exactly ketamine works on the brain. Scientists tend to focus on ketamine’s effect on glutamate, a neurotransmitter associated with memory, learning, and mood regulation found throughout the central nervous system. Most current research shows ketamine has an excitatory effect on glutamate. The heightened glutamate activity allows new pathways to form. These new formations correlate with reduced stress, an increased ability to process information, and improved mood regulation. Many researchers are considering that the positive effects of many antidepressants may be a result of regulating glutamate, although less directly than ketamine. Because of this indirect process, SSRIs and tricyclic antidepressants often take weeks to start improving symptoms of mood disorders, if they do at all. Ketamine often produces results and relief from mental health condition symptoms during the first session.

What Will My Infusions Be Like?

We strive to ensure all of our patients are comfortable and at ease in their private rooms during treatment, with care administered by exceptional and caring medical professionals.

Our attentive team will be close at hand to monitor you and facilitate your therapeutic experience during your infusion.

Physician Answers to Your Ketamine Questions

Originally used as a tranquilizing agent, Ketamine has recently been found to be effective for the treatment of a number of psychiatric conditions, including, but not limited to therapy-resistant depression (TRD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and bipolar disorder. Its mechanism of action is unclear at this time, but it appears to somehow allow for the neurocircuitry of the brain to rewire itself by increasing brain plasticity.
You will have an IV placed in your hand or arm for the delivery of ketamine. During the course of the infusion, we will monitor your vital signs. The process is not painful in any way, and can even be relaxing for some. There are a few patients who experience dissociative symptoms during their infusion, but these are short lived. If you are ever uncomfortable there are medications we can give you to make your infusion more pleasant. Some possible side effects include blurred vision, nausea, dizziness, and a sense of floating.
No, there are no serious health or addiction risks with ketamine therapy. Ketamine has been safely used for over fifty years on patients in hospitals. Although ketamine has a history of being abused as a hallucinogen, the dose and rate of administration used for therapy is insufficient to experience those effects or become habit-forming.
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