The Effect of Ketamine on the Onset Time and the Intubating Conditions of Rocuronium Bromide

SUMMARY: From this prospective single blind study conducted on 80 patients undergoing elective surgery, we tried to evaluate the effect of the Ketamine on the onset time and intubating conditions of Rocuronium bromide. The summary of our findings are 1. The demographic profile such as age, sex, height, weight and BMI were comparable between the groups. 2. The indices that measure the difficulty of an intubation such as MMS, Cormack Lehane grading and POGO score were comparable between the groups. 3. The mean time of onset of neuromuscular blockade was 93.48± 33.74 seconds in Ketamine group versus 127.50±48.75 seconds in saline group. It was statistically significant with a ‘p’value of0.001. 4. The percentage of acceptable intubating conditions in Ketamine group was 87.5% and in saline group was 80 %. Both the groups were comparable. 5. When compared to the baseline values, the mean arterial pressure at induction was better maintained in Ketamine group than in saline group. 6. Arterial blood pressure and the heart rate at other times were comparable between the groups. CONCLUSION: From our study we conclude that administration of low dose Ketamine before induction reduces the onset time of Rocuronium bromide with stable hemodynamics. Though, acceptable intubating conditions were seen in 87.5 % of cases with Ketamine, we could not demonstrate a significant difference between the groups