Ketamine Infusion for Sedation and Analgesia during Mechanical Ventilation in the ICU: A Multicenter Evaluation

Table 2

Potential adverse effects of ketamine and patient outcomes (overall and stratified by ketamine dose).

Variable	Ketamine dose group			All patients (N = 95)
	0.1–0.99 mg/kg/hr (N = 27)	1.0–1.49 mg/kg/hr (N = 32)	1.5–2.4 mg/kg/hr (N = 36)
Potential adverse effects of clinical significance, any	4 (29%)	5 (36%)	5 (36%)	14 (100%)
Hypertension	1	0	2	3 (21%)
Acute neurologic change	3	1	1	5 (36%)
Emergence phenomena	0	3	2	5 (36%)
Cardiac arrest	1	2	1	4 (4%)
Duration of mechanical ventilation, days	9 (7–19)	10 (6–16)	9 (3–15)	9 (5–16)
ICU length of stay, days	14 (9–28)	15 (9–24)	11 (4–23)	14 (7–23)
Hospital mortality	13 (48%)	6 (19%)	11 (31%)	30 (32%)

Values are given as median (interquartile range) or count (percentage). Cardiac arrest was defined by its occurrence at any time during the index hospitalization after exposure to ketamine. After adjudication, ketamine could have possibly contributed to the cardiac arrest in 1 of the 4 patients, and that patient was in the 1.0–1.49 mg/kg/hr dose group.