Anesthesia and Intraventricular Hemorrhage

Abstract

To the Editor.— The study by Goddard-Finegold and Armstrong1 demonstrated a decreased incidence in intraventricular hemorrhage in hypertensive beagle puppies pretreated with phenobarbital. However, there was no discussion of the possible effects of the anesthetic agent, ketamine, on their results. Dawson et al2 demonstrated an 80% increase in cerebral blood flow in dogs after receiving ketamine, 2 mg/kg, IV. Blood flow returned to baseline levels after 30 minutes. This effect of ketamine on cerebral blood flow was blocked by prior treatment with thiopental.