Comparison between intravenous and intramuscular administration of ketamine in children sedation referred to emergency department

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Ketamine, among wide variety of sedative drugs, has shown beneficial effects when using during the procedural sedation, specifically in pediatrics. Various parameters should be considered in order to perform a safe and effective procedural sedation including optimum dosage of the sedative, administration methods of sedation, and need for applying any adjuvant drug. In this study, we aimed to review the studies, which have compared the efficacy of the different ways of the injection of ketamine such as intravenous or intramuscular ketamine application. Based on data obtained from the related articles, efficacy and safety of these two methods of ketamine usage in the pediatric procedural sedation were widely similar, but the intravenously administration of the ketamine can be proposed as the preferable mode.