Lidocaine and Ketamine for Management of Chronic Pain

As lidocaine and ketamine provide analgesia by acting on different molecular pathways, administering them together may produce synergistic effects, which can allow for using a lower dose of each medication and thereby reducing the corresponding side effects. To the investigator's knowledge, despite the common practice of multimodal analgesia, lidocaine-ketamine infusions have never been studied prospectively in an out of hospital setting to treat neuropathic pain. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the current routine practice of lidocaine-ketamine infusions conducted at Allevio Pain Management Clinic, a large outpatient community based chronic pain management facility. Lidocaine-ketamine infusions are prescribed to patients that have pain that is considered to be neuropathic for which standard anti-neuropathic medications have been ineffective or poorly tolerated by patients. A prospective longitudinal study.