Children rescued from Thai cave drugged with horse sedative | Chronic

Doctors who collaborated in rescuing the twelve young members of a soccer team jailed in 2018 in a cave in Thailand acknowledged that they were being administered "unspecified dose"ketamine, a drug with anesthetic properties, to keep them anesthetized and thus facilitate their rescue.

Ketamine, long used as an anesthetic for horses, was a key element in rescuing children who spent 17 days with their trainer in the Tham Luang Nang No cave in northern Asia.

In a letter published yesterday in the "New England Journal of Medicine", the doctors who designed the rescue revealed that football players aged 11 to 15 years had been anesthetized with this substance while they were evacuated in cold waters in neoprene suits.

In addition to avoiding panic attacks during dives, ketamine has a rare property among sedatives because it narrows blood vessels instead of relaxing them, making it more difficult for children to experience hypothermia in the body. water after a stress. , dehydration and lack of food, said the doctors.

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Ketamine is a dissociative drug with hallucinogenic potential, which can also create extracorporeal sensations. It is used in medicine for its sedative, badgesic and especially anesthetic properties, although it is also used illegally because of its psychedelic effects.

Once the use of ketamine was known, reactions within the medical community were diverse.
"You would have a fully cooperative child who would continue to breathe automatically during extraction", the anesthetist celebrated John Rivard, who works in the United States and has participated in medical missions in Thailand and 14 other countries, reported the DPA.

Jeffrey L. Apfelbaum, anesthetist at the University of Chicago, added that "The skills needed to get the kids out were incredible. There are countless ways, medical and diving, for which tragedy could have occurred"

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But other professionals have warned of serious risks to children. Sedation with ketamine "bIt fundamentally upsets your brain but does not make it sleep "explained the doctor Jeffrey B. Gross, head of the anesthesia department at the University of Connecticut, the ability of children to perform complex maneuvers such as swimming would be compromised, said the DPA.

None of the children locked in the cave had ever practiced diving. To escape, they had to go one by one through a labyrinth of caves with rough waters, with a mask that pumped oxygen to their lungs.

Ketamine causes between 5 and 30% of terrifying hallucinations, especially adolescents, according to Gross. Although, in small doses, the respiratory stops are not usual, with larger loads "they may lose consciousness and stop breathing"he added.