Ketamine and Hydromorphone for Patient Controlled Pain Relief in Children's Mucositis
Status:
Withdrawn
Trial end date:
2011-12-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
The treatment of cancer in children may result in an extremely painful condition called oral
mucositis when the cells lining the mouth are injured due to the cancer medication. Patients
with this condition are often unable to take anything by mouth or to swallow their own
saliva. This severe pain may last for as long as 2 weeks. A survey of our previous 22
patients showed high daily pain scores despite the use of intravenous (given through a small
tube in a vein) opioid medications (family of pain relieving drugs, e.g. morphine and
hydromorphone).
The purpose of this pilot study is to determine which of 3 concentrations of ketamine to
combine with hydromorphone to provide the best pain relief with minimum side effects. The
results from this study will allow us to do a larger study to compare the best concentration
found from this study to standard treatment. If successful, this combination of ketamine and
hydromorphone will also be used to treat other pain problems in children.