Pain
September 1, 2024
Yang Zhou, Wanchen Sun, Yuxuan Fu et al.
9 citations
Moderate-to-severe acute postsurgical pain after spinal surgery can slow recovery. A combination of esketamine and pregabalin reduced the incidence of such pain from 60.5% to 27.3% in the first 48 hours after surgery, based on a randomized trial of 90 patients undergoing resection of spinal neoplasms. The odds ratio was 0.25, indicating a substantial benefit. However, mild dissociative symptoms occurred in 18.2% of the combination group versus none in the control group, suggesting the analgesic strategy carries this risk.
Pharmacological research
July 1, 2026
Yang Zhou, Wanchen Sun, Yuxuan Fu et al.
Among patients undergoing major surgery who had moderate-to-severe depressive symptoms before the operation, a single intraoperative dose of esketamine led to a higher rate of symptom remission three days after surgery compared with a placebo. In a randomized, double-blind trial of 435 patients, 28.3% in the esketamine group achieved remission versus 11.3% in the placebo group. Acute pain rates did not differ between groups. Esketamine treatment requires monitoring for possible dissociative side effects, and its clinical use for depressive symptoms should weigh benefits against risks.
Behavioural Brain Research
November 1, 2021
Haiyang Liu, Ke-Hui Hu, Yingjie Peng et al.
During dexmedetomidine-induced sedation, the brain's functional networks become more fragmented and dynamic, with increased switching rates and decreased integration compared to wakefulness; these changes largely reverse upon recovery of consciousness. The study tracked dynamic network reconfiguration using fMRI data from 21 healthy subjects and multilayer network analysis, comparing wakefulness, sedation, and recovery states. The findings suggest that altered states of consciousness involve a whole-brain pattern of higher modular dynamics and more fragmented communication, offering insights into the neural basis of consciousness and potential clinical relevance for disorders of consciousness.