SynthesisScandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine2025
The effect of low-dose ketamine compared to morphine on the severity of acute pain in emergency situations: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Ketamine Dosing Across Clinical Indications: A Narrative Review Organized by Proposed NMDA-Related Mechanisms.Journal of clinical pharmacology · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundRecent studies have increasingly investigated the efficacy and safety of ketamine for the management of acute pain in emergency settings and compared it with standard treatments, such as morphine; however, the results remain inconsistent. This updated meta-analysis aimed to investigate the efficacy of low-dose ketamine compared to morphine on the severity of acute pain in emergency situations.
methodsWeb of Science, the Cochrane Library, PubMed, and Scopus were systematically searched from their establishment to June 2, 2025, to identify randomized controlled trials comparing the effect of ketamine with morphine on the severity of acute pain in emergency situations. We used a random-effects model to pool data.
resultsTwenty studies with 2559 participants were included. Compared to morphine, ketamine did not significantly change the numerical rating scale (NRS) score 15 min after administration (standardized mean difference (SMD) (SMD) -0.23, 95% confidence interval (CI) (-0.47, 0.00), I
conclusionThere is no significant difference in efficacy between ketamine and morphine in controlling the severity of acute pain, but ketamine faces greater safety issues compared to morphine.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.