The dangers of ketamine and transaxenemic acid (TXA) have been greatly exaggerated, according to a pharmacist who hopes to get emergency physicians talking about using the often-overlooked medications at this year’s annual meeting.

“People seem to be hesitant to use them based on old data and what I want to present to them is newer data that should help convince them that they are safe to use in a trauma patient,” said Bryan Hayes, PharmD, FAACT, an emergency medicine pharmacist and toxicologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Dr. Hayes will present a rapid-fire session titled, “Traumacology: Drugs for the Trauma Bay.” His goal is to get people talking about the efficacy of ketamine and TXA, both shown in recent data to be useful after years of data that cast doubts on their usefulness.

Attend this session to find out why ketamine and TXA are due for a change.

He plans to suggest that physicians who don’t have access to the medications ask for them to be added to their formularies. He’ll try to fight misperceptions, including that ketamine causes worsening intracranial pressure increases in trauma patients.

“We’ve had so many times in medicine…where we’ve been practicing a certain way based on what we thought was good data for many years,” he said. “All of a sudden one, or two, or three new trials come out that show something different and it’s just hard to say, ‘Well, we’ve been doing this for so long, should these new trials really change what we do or should we just continue doing what we had been doing?’” Attend this session to find out why ketamine and TXA are due for a change.

Dr. Hayes

Rapid Fire: Traumacology: Drugs for the Trauma Bay
Sunday, Oct. 16
1:00–1:25 p.m.
Mandalay Bay Ballroom B