Intermittent administration of low dose ketamine can shorten the course of electroconvulsive therapy for depression and reduce complications: A randomized controlled trial.
Psychiatry Research November 1, 2019 Jun Dong, S. Min, H. Qiu et al. 26 citations
For patients with major depressive disorder, adding a low dose of ketamine to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) once a week improved remission rates and reduced psychiatric complications compared with giving ketamine before every ECT session. In a randomized trial of 134 patients, those receiving intermittent ketamine had a complication rate of 4.35%, far lower than the 20.93% rate in the repeated-ketamine group and similar to the 0% rate in the routine ECT group. Both ketamine regimens led to higher remission than ECT alone. Intermittent low-dose ketamine appears to boost ECT's effectiveness while minimizing side effects.