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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

#91

Post by jessaustin »

burfog wrote: post #53
profikid wrote: post #46

Alcohol and ketamine is a known bad bad combination. 500mg is a damn lot of ketamine and morally there is no difference than drugging someone against their will by non medical people for no medical purpose.

Cops also use pepper spray. It's against someone's will, by non-cooks, for no culinary purpose. Cops also use electric stun guns. It's against someone's will, by non-electricians, for no electronic purpose. Mind proposing an acceptable method of restraint? Go ahead, and see people tear it apart as a human rights violation. It's much like the hopeless situation in bad schools, where all possible methods of discipline…

They're not injecting this with tranq darts. Someone who is restrained enough to inject with a syringe, is already restrained enough. Probably with handcuffs/leg-irons/etc., but some cops also like to kneel on necks.

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

#92

Post by scaryclam »

collyw wrote: post #83
profikid wrote: post #46

Alcohol and ketamine is a known bad bad combination. 500mg is a damn lot of ketamine and morally there is no difference than drugging someone against their will by non medical people for no medical purpose.

If someone is waving a knife or gun about and is a danger to others, I would say there is a moral difference. I am assuming that the police use it mainly for cases like that, but that is just an assumption. It still seems better than shooting at them. The linked article doesn't say anything like that though, but it is quite low on details leading to the arrest.

If someone is waving a weapon around I really doubt the police are getting near enough to inject drugs. There seems to be zero good reason for the use of this.

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

#93

Post by rscho »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #62

> He got 500 milligrams because they thought he weighed 220 pounds, but he was only 140 pounds and should have received 315 milligrams. 315 milligrams is still.. a lot. Especially injected into the bloodstream (I presume?) all at one time. Enough to really wrangle your marbles even if you're used to that kind of stuff. edit: To expand, that's about the dosage most people would get delusions of some sort, but not be 1…

> 315 milligrams is still.. a lot. Especially injected into the bloodstream (I presume?)

Iv dose for induction of general anesthesia is ~3-5 mg/kg. Or ~5 mg/kg intramuscularly.

The main thing with ketamine is that it causes tachycardia/arrhythmias and increases blood pressure. While that can be desirable for people in shock, it is a big problem if the person is already under proarrhythmic drugs (e.g. cocaine).

In Europe, we use antipsychotics for similar situations (haloperidol).

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

#94

Post by xtian »

ak39 wrote: post #64
nerdbaggy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, but drugs should only be administered by suitably trained and educated professionals such as EMT and health care professionals. Not police!

Paramedics were the ones who killed Elijah McClain with ketamine.

Putting aside that police shouldn’t be utilizing drugs period, there is zero justification for administering drugs to someone who isn’t a danger to themselves or others, as was the case for McClain. It makes more sense when you realize that the Aurora PD is eighth in the nation for police killings per capita.

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

#95

Post by GordonS »

burfog wrote: post #53
profikid wrote: post #46

Alcohol and ketamine is a known bad bad combination. 500mg is a damn lot of ketamine and morally there is no difference than drugging someone against their will by non medical people for no medical purpose.

Cops also use pepper spray. It's against someone's will, by non-cooks, for no culinary purpose. Cops also use electric stun guns. It's against someone's will, by non-electricians, for no electronic purpose. Mind proposing an acceptable method of restraint? Go ahead, and see people tear it apart as a human rights violation. It's much like the hopeless situation in bad schools, where all possible methods of discipline…

There is another method you neglected to mention: deescalation.

From all I've seen of US law enforcement, this seems to be applied very seldom, with cops actively escalating the situation and quickly reaching for tools of violence (beatings, batons, pepper spray, tasers, guns).

Most (all?) of the rest of the western world doesn't have these issues to anywhere near the degree the US does. Nobody in their right mind outside of the US would be justifying injecting people with massive doses of disassociative drugs, yet some people in the US think this is OK. That kind of says it all, really.

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

#96

Post by throwanem »

nerdbaggy wrote: post #34
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…

Sounds terrible. In a recent surgery in pre op they gave me Versed/Midazolam. I was so spacey it was weird and kinda scary. I can’t imagine what ketamine would be like

Versed is pretty wild, even at preinduction doses. You can learn to be OK with it, but it was a little scary for me too, the first time I had a procedure that involved it.

That procedure also most likely involved ketamine - I don't know for sure, it was a long time ago and nobody told me the names of anything but the Versed and that only because I asked, but I had totally uncharacteristic recurring nightmares and emotional problems for the next little while afterward. When all of that came back up during planning for the surgery I had to have last year, my surgeon noted that that sounded in his experience like ketamine side effects, and that this time I'd be getting propofol, which is not at all a dissociative, instead. And, sure enough, I was just fine after that surgery, despite it being much more invasive and thus painful in its aftereffects.

Based on that, I'll echo what others here have already said: the thought of being given a surprise high dose of ketamine, in the context of a situation that also involves the use of violence against one's person, is horrifying, and complex PTSD is the least severe consequence I can imagine.

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

#97

Post by pbsds »

GordonS wrote: post #85
dcolkitt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess the problem is those already intoxicated on opiates, or even alcohol, as many arrestees are. Adding a bento, like valium, to that mix is extremely dangerous because of the synergistic effect on respiratory depression.

If you're intoxicated on opioids, you are not going to be violently resisting arrest in the first place.

Not guaranteed

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

#98

Post by GordonS »

jdietrich wrote: post #49
sneak wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's probably quite dangerous in this kind of setting though, where the person has likely already been beaten, tasered and choked.

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

#99

Post by hutzlibu »

chrisseaton wrote: post #87
dirtnugget wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering how one could be so bad at estimating weight. But yes, it’s a lot.

How do you estimate the weight of a person? I know how much I weigh, but I don't know how much anyone else weighs. I guess some other people don't even weigh themselves so don't even know how much they weigh. How do you estimate it?

Height + bellysize + muscle size?

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

#100

Post by chrisseaton »

hutzlibu wrote: post #99
chrisseaton wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you estimate the weight of a person? I know how much I weigh, but I don't know how much anyone else weighs. I guess some other people don't even weigh themselves so don't even know how much they weigh. How do you estimate it?

Height + bellysize + muscle size?

Right... how do I get a number from looking at those?
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