Ketamine anaesthesia for young children undergoing radiotherapy

Young children with radiosensitive malignant tumours often require sedation or anaesthesia to provide immobility for radiotherapy sessions lasting several days. This paper describes the use of repeated intramuscular ketamine anaesthesia for radiotherapy in children age 1.5 to 5 years. Intramuscular ketamine 5-13mg/kg body weight was administered on 280 occasions to 15 children, the highest number of sessions per child being 30 and the least 9. The airway and cardiovascular parameters were well maintained. The time to complete recovery varied from 15 to 90 minutes (mean 52.5+/-31.7 S.D.). Involuntary movements of the tongue, mouth and limbs were observed in 8 patients (52.3%) during 63 sessions (22.5%) but only necessitated interruption of radiotherapy on 6 occasions (2.1%). Ketamine was found to be safe and effective for sedation of young children in the radiotherapy suite and minimal aneasthetic facilities were required.