Abstract

Ketamine and Atropine has been increasingly used in recent years as an effective form of deep sedation/ anesthesia in children Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of using ketamine plus atropine as anesthetic agents for pediatric oncology procedures. Thereby, we establish anesthetic protocol for Pediatric Oncology Procedures. Patients and Methods: A descriptive study on 32 pediatric patients of both sexs from 1/2015 to 7/2015. After having their parents'consent, the research was performed. Data were analysed by Medcalc software. Result: The total number of procedures was 60. All procedures were successfully completed. There wasn't any state that the doctors didn't take enough marrow to do tests and the anesthetic helped doctors to avoid trauma for patients when the doctor did intrathecal chemotherapy procedures. Intravenous ketamine was tolerated well in our study group since the procedures were very short and required only 4-10 minutes. The time that patients woke up was short, the average value was 13.5 minutes. Only 1.7% of our procedures experienced apnea, 3.3% convulsion, nystagmus, hyperactivity: 5% excess salivation, dream 10% vomiting, none of the patients had laryngospasm or transient rash. And 100% their parents were satisfied with the use of anesthetics. Conclusions: In conclusion, 0.25mg/kg intravenous ketamine and 0.1mg atropine were found effective and suitable dose in children requiring deep sedation for painful procedures like bone marrow aspiration as well as intrathecal chemotherapy with minimal side effects. Thereby, we establish protocol with the above doses and continue to apply and follow up the research with more pediatric patients.