Aspirin/Ketamine Combo Shows Promise in Pain Management

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Robert Glatter, MD: Welcome. I'm Dr Robert Glatter, medical advisor for Medscape Emergency Medicine. Today we have a distinguished panel joining us to discuss an important advance in pain management in the emergency department using a specialized form of aspirin and oral ketamine.

Here to discuss this new study is Dr Sergey Motov, professor of emergency medicine and director of research in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. Also joining us is Dr Joseph Habboushe, assistant professor of emergency medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City and co-founder of Vitalis Pharma.

Welcome, gentlemen. I really appreciate you taking the time to join us.

Sergey M. Motov, MD: Thanks so much.

Joseph Habboushe, MD: Thanks for having us.

Glatter: Joseph, I want to start with you. It's very interesting how this aspirin that you describe in your study, VTS-Aspirin, has a very integral role in terms of its actions with ketamine. I wanted to start off and let you describe what exactly VTS-Aspirin is, its mechanism and the rationale behind its use.

Habboushe: Thanks so much for having us, first of all. We were trying to solve a very well-known problem in medicine, which is that we don't have that many great pain medications out there.