This research could be potentially life-changing for people who have hard-to-treat mental health issues.
Although physicians should administer ketamine in a controlled health setting, you may still be curious as to what the normal dose of ketamine is. The short answer is that it depends on a few factors.
We now know what ketamine is used for, as well as how the medical community incorporates it into several applications.
Some of these include the following.
- Anesthesia (for example, during surgery) - Pain management after surgery - Ketamine for depression - Ketamine therapy for PTSD
The dosage is calculated by milligrams of a drug per kilogram (or pound) of a person’s body mass and expressed as mg/kg.
When using ketamine to induce anesthesia, an average dose of 2mg/kg IV leads to approximately five to ten minutes of dissociation.
The normal dose of ketamine given for depressive symptoms is between 0.25mg/kg and 0.5mg/kg.
A patient’s age, whether they’ve taken ketamine before, and weight are also factors. Age plays a role because children metabolize ketamine faster than adults.