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Ketamine that's injected during arrests draws new scrutiny

abcnews.go.com

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Re: Ketamine that's injected during arrests draws new scrutiny

#41

Post by EVdotIO »

Disclaimer: There is so much that can go wrong administering drugs without somebody's medical background (like just getting the weight right in this case), random variables (say ate grapefruit beforehand), or just sheer dumb misfortune. Then there is the dystopian nature of yet another layer to diffuse responsibility. This is tragic, and I hope doesn't set precedent.

All that out of the way. Why is this on here? This seems to be just run of political muckracking to reinforce the narrative of "we live in an oppressive police state". Granted, I think society can do much better. This is ABC news, and I can say with a high level of confidence, we are very likely not getting the full picture here. I'm not one to normal point out guidelines, buts here we go:

What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

This uptick in political content is really not doing this community a service.

Re: Ketamine that's injected during arrests draws new scrutiny

#42

Post by jdietrich »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #13

Setting aside the fact that this kind of thing happens at all: How is ketamine the drug of choice?! Although it has a very high active dose:fatal dose (alluded to in other comments), accepted practice for "chemical restraint" is Thorazine+Valium (or equivalent); ketamine is basically never used for behavioral "sedation" by any medical professional.

The use of chemical restraint in a law enforcement setting is an appalling breach of human rights, but ketamine is by far the safest option in an out-of-hospital setting, especially when you don't have any sort of patient history. I'm sure that someone has been killed by a single clinical dose of ketamine, but I'm not sure how. Ketamine isn't a very good chemical cosh, but at least it's a safe one.

Anyone administering chlorpromazine and a benzodiazepine in this setting is criminally negligent - if the "patient" (and I very much hesitate to use that word in this context) has taken another CNS depressant, they're in deep trouble.

Re: Ketamine that's injected during arrests draws new scrutiny

#43

Post by nerdbaggy »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #13

Setting aside the fact that this kind of thing happens at all: How is ketamine the drug of choice?! Although it has a very high active dose:fatal dose (alluded to in other comments), accepted practice for "chemical restraint" is Thorazine+Valium (or equivalent); ketamine is basically never used for behavioral "sedation" by any medical professional.

It’s used “a lot” by the EMS. It’s doesn’t lower your blood pressure like Versed can, and ketamine has some pain relief properties.

Re: Ketamine that's injected during arrests draws new scrutiny

#44

Post by nerdbaggy »

axaxs wrote: post #3

Why are we injecting people during arrests, which by definition are not yet guilty people? Even if nobody had died, this is absurd.

There are some good uses cases . You arrive on scene and the patient is injured and agitated and lashing out. EMT is having a hard time as well. You need to give them something. Basically Benzos or Ketamine, and Ketamine is much safer and can relieve pain

Re: Ketamine that's injected during arrests draws new scrutiny

#45

Post by aaron_m04 »

geofft wrote: post #39
smabie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you experienced with drugs? Because most of my friends think ketamine is one the greatest drugs you can do. It would have probably a lot more fun if you were in a comfortable place, like your house, hanging out with your gf or something. Some of the most chill and relaxed moments of my entire life have been on ketamine. I only do it occasionally because of the nasty chronic side-effects, though.

Do your friends generally take drugs involuntarily and without informed awareness of the effects and without a trusted trip sitter the first time they do something new and with associated negative circumstances (like a broken bone or an arrest)?

That's GP's point I think: the context of the experience makes all the difference.

Re: Ketamine that's injected during arrests draws new scrutiny

#47

Post by ladberg »

mr_spothawk wrote: post #38
ladberg wrote: post #14

I dislocated my ankle rock climbing a few years ago and had to be taken to the hospital. After a few doses of morphine had zero noticeable impact on my pain, they gave me ketamine so I couldn't feel the pain of the reduction (aka pulling my foot out and moving it back into place). The ketamine experience was far worse than my fall and any subsequent pain I experienced, and I would gladly take the pain of the reductio…

SWIM is a tremendous fan of injected ketamine > Think of the hypnosis scene from "Get Out" this is EXACTLY right. > an empty void for an eternity when it was only a few minutes. if you maintained the ability to interpret audio and visual inputs, then probably 20-30 minutes, if SWIM had to guess. > the thought that police use it to pacify someone during an arrest is sickening. this is EXACTLY right. reminds me of the…

Yep, I think the empty void feeling was only a few minutes and after that ended it took like 20-30 minutes to be able to open my eyes and regain motor control.

Re: Ketamine that's injected during arrests draws new scrutiny

#48

Post by ladberg »

smabie wrote: post #37
ladberg wrote: post #14

I dislocated my ankle rock climbing a few years ago and had to be taken to the hospital. After a few doses of morphine had zero noticeable impact on my pain, they gave me ketamine so I couldn't feel the pain of the reduction (aka pulling my foot out and moving it back into place). The ketamine experience was far worse than my fall and any subsequent pain I experienced, and I would gladly take the pain of the reductio…

Are you experienced with drugs? Because most of my friends think ketamine is one the greatest drugs you can do. It would have probably a lot more fun if you were in a comfortable place, like your house, hanging out with your gf or something. Some of the most chill and relaxed moments of my entire life have been on ketamine. I only do it occasionally because of the nasty chronic side-effects, though.

Nope, not experienced and don't plan to be. I totally believe it could be a nice experience in a different setting, but I doubt that experiencing it in the hospital or mid-arrest would ever be enjoyable.

Re: Ketamine that's injected during arrests draws new scrutiny

#49

Post by jdietrich »

sneak wrote: post #10
qchris wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope I'm not not regurgitating false information (I'm finding it difficult to find a reputable primary source, since there's a lot of clearly pro-ketamine sites), but I was under the impression that one of the reasons that ketamine has been used both in people and in applications like as a horse tranquilizer is that it's safe dosage range is considerably wide, presenting some margin of error over similar drugs. Obv…

3-4mg/kg is more than sufficient for subduing an adult human. 7-10mg/kg will cause unconsciousness, and is dangerous without CLOSE airway monitoring. Injecting a suspect with a drug without medical necessity or consent is a major human rights issue, and you wouldn’t be far off if you called it rape. The whole thing is quite obviously pig lies; they had dogs and tasers on this 140lb black man who they had already had…

7-10mg/kg will cause unconsciousness, and is dangerous without CLOSE airway monitoring.

Just barely dangerous. You might see a bit of transient respiratory depression, but the risk of respiratory arrest or clinically significant hypoxia is very low even in an out-of-hospital setting. We have case reports of paediatric patients receiving as much as 50mg/kg without significant ill effect.

https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1016/S0196-0644(99)800...

Re: Ketamine that's injected during arrests draws new scrutiny

#50

Post by seigando »

EVdotIO wrote: post #41

Disclaimer: There is so much that can go wrong administering drugs without somebody's medical background (like just getting the weight right in this case), random variables (say ate grapefruit beforehand), or just sheer dumb misfortune. Then there is the dystopian nature of yet another layer to diffuse responsibility. This is tragic, and I hope doesn't set precedent. All that out of the way. Why is this on here? This…

This strikes me as falling into the 'interesting new phenomenon' category.
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