The Synergism of Dexmedetomidine and Ketamine

Background: The study was designed to investigate the anesthetic effect of the combination of dexmedetomidine (Dex) and ketamine (Ket). Methods: Hot-plate test, acetic acid-induced writhing test, righting reflex test, acquisition test, JY-2410 digital brain atlas instrument, RM6240 multi-channel physiological signal acquisition and processing system and sequential method were used to observe the combination of Dex and Ket on the analgesia, hypnosis, anterograde amnesia, δ-band power percentage of quantitative pharmaco-electroencephalogram (QPEEG), heart rate (HR), mean arterial pressure (MAP), respiratory rate (RR) and 50% lethal dose (LD50) values respectively. Atipamezole (Ati) was used to analyse whether α2-adrenergic receptor could mediate the effect of combination of Ket and Dex.Results: Compared with single group, the pain threshold of mice was markedly increased in hot-plate test (P 0.05).Conclusions: The combination of Dex and Ket had a synergistic effect of anesthesia which was mediated by α2-adrenergic receptor. Dex can stabilize fluctuations of MAP and HR as well as possibly decreasing the toxicity of Ket.  Citation: Su-Pei Song, Hong Wang, Hui-Ming Cai, Pan Li, Ti-Jun Dai. The synergism of dexmedetomidine and ketamine. J Anesth Perioper Med 2015; 2: 183-91. doi: 10.24015/JAPM.2015.0025This is an open-access article, published by Evidence Based Communications (EBC). This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format for any lawful purpose. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.