Ketamine enhances local anesthetic and analgesic effects of bupivacaine by peripheral mechanism: a study in postoperative patients

Abstract

Patients with unilateral (n = 14) and bilateral (n = 4) herniorrhaphy participated in this study. With bilateral herniorrhaphy, at the end of the surgery, the wound was infiltrated with a solution of bupivacaine 0.5% and ketamine 0.3% on one side and a solution of bupivacaine 0.5% only, on the other. With unilateral herniorrhaphy, the patients were randomly assigned to one of two groups (n = 7). One group at the end of the surgery received the infiltration with a solution of bupivacaine 0.5% and ketamine 0.3%, the other group received the infiltration with a solution of bupivacaine 0.5% only. The duration of the local anesthetic (response to a von Frey filament) and postoperative analgesic (time to mild spontaneous pain) effects of the infiltrations, as well as wound pain threshold 24 h after surgery (pressure algometry), were determined. In patient with unilateral herniorrhaphy, the addition of ketamine for wound infiltration enhanced the duration of infiltration anesthesia (206 +/- 76 versus 343 +/- 108 min, P < 0.02) and analgesia (240 +/- 45 versus 420 +/- 151 min, P < 0.03). Similar enhancement of the local anesthetic effect was observed in patients with bilateral herniorrhaphy. The increase in pain threshold to pressure on the wound with the addition of ketamine was evident in bilateral herniorrhaphy patients and also with a combination of bilateral and unilateral results (1.39 +/- 0.40 versus 2.35 +/- 0.92 kg, P < 0.02). In the group of five volunteers, the subcutaneous infiltration with 0.3% ketamine produced a local anesthetic effect lasting only 10-20 min. The results indicate that ketamine acting via a peripheral mechanism can profoundly enhance anesthetic and analgesic actions of a local anesthetic administered for infiltration anesthesia.