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Review
. 2023 Jul 12;12(14):4643.
doi: 10.3390/jcm12144643.

Ketamine Clinical Use on the Pediatric Critically Ill Infant: A Global Bibliometric and Critical Review of Literature

Mary Lucy Ferraz Maia  1 , Lucas Villar Pedrosa Silva Pantoja  1 , Brenda Costa Da Conceição  1 , Kissila Márvia Machado-Ferraro  1 , Jackeline Kerlice Mata Gonçalves  1 , Paulo Monteiro Dos Santos-Filho  1 , Rafael Rodrigues Lima  2 , Enéas Andrade Fontes-Junior  1 , Cristiane Socorro Ferraz Maia  1
Affiliations
Review

Ketamine Clinical Use on the Pediatric Critically Ill Infant: A Global Bibliometric and Critical Review of Literature

Mary Lucy Ferraz Maia et al. J Clin Med. .

Abstract

The developing central nervous system is vulnerable to several stimuli, especially psychotropic drugs. Sedation procedures during the developmental period are frequent in pediatric intensive care units (PICUs), in which the use of the sedative agent is still a challenge for the PICU team. Ketamine has been indicated for sedation in critically ill children with hemodynamic and ventilatory instabilities, but the possible neurobehavioral consequences related to this use are still uncertain. Here, we performed a bibliometric analysis with conventional metrics and a critical review of clinical findings to reveal a gap in the literature that deserves further investigation. We revealed that only 56 articles corresponded to the inclusion criteria of the study. The United States of America emerges as the main country within the scope of this review. In addition, professional clinical societies play a key role in the publications of scientific clinical findings through the specialist journals, which encourages the sharing of research work. The co-occurrence of keywords evidenced that the terms "sedation", "ketamine", and "pediatric" were the most frequent. Case series and review articles were the most prevalent study design. In the critical evaluation, the scarce studies highlight the need of use and post-use monitoring, which reinforces the importance of additional robust clinical studies to characterize the possible adverse effects resulting from ketamine anesthetic protocol in critically ill children.

Keywords: bibliometric study; ketamine; pediatric intensive care units; pediatric patient; sedation; sedoanalgesia.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematic of search strategy.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Methodological procedures strategy flowchart.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Network visualization of authors with the number of publications (A), citations (B), and leading network of authors (C). There is a direct proportionality of the cluster size and the number of publications or citations.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Journals that published the articles focused on clinical studies of ketamine and pediatric critically ill patients. * Journals without impact factor (IF).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Network visualization of the co-occurrence of the keywords used by the authors of the selected studies using the VOS viewer software. Clusters are highlighted by different colors. The node size represents the frequency of the keyword and the lines reveal the connections between the keywords (A). Top 10 most frequent words (B).
Figure 6
Figure 6
Worldwide distribution of all selected articles (A) with the representation of countries from published articles (B) and the total number of citations (C).
Figure 7
Figure 7
Contribution of institutions (A) and top 16 most productive institutions, with the amount of publications and number of citations (B). There is a direct proportionality of the cluster size and the number of publications.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Type of study per decade (A) and annual historical series of publications (B).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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