In brief
- NYU Langone Health (New York) is launching K-POST, a trial comparing low-dose ketamine to standard treatment following orthopedic trauma surgery.
- The study will involve 1,800 patients across several U.S. centers, with a seven-year follow-up period.
- The $19.67 million in funding is provided by PCORI, the U.S. institute that evaluates the comparative effectiveness of treatments already in use.
A team at NYU Langone Health has launched a large-scale clinical trial to determine whether adding low-dose ketamine to standard care reduces pain and improves recovery following orthopedic trauma surgery—the type of severe fractures and injuries that often require plates, screws, or pins. The study, dubbed K-POST (Ketamine for Pain After Orthopedic Surgery for Trauma), will recruit 1,800 people at various U.S. hospitals and follow them for seven years.
Why this type of surgical pain is a major concern
Pain following orthopedic trauma surgery does not always disappear once the bone heals. It can persist for months, disrupt sleep and mood, and prolong the need for painkillers. Lead investigator Jing Wang, a professor of anesthesiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, notes that this persistent pain complicates patients’ physical and emotional recovery and maintains opioid use longer than is desirable. He is joined in leading the trial by Philipp Leucht, from orthopedic surgery, and Andrea Troxel, who heads the study’s biostatistics.
What the trial compares
K-POST divides patients into two groups: one receives the standard approach to postoperative pain (opioids, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and topical treatments), and the other receives that same approach plus a low-dose ketamine infusion during and after surgery. The follow-up uses the Brief Pain Inventory, a standard questionnaire in pain research, to measure both the intensity of the pain and the degree to which it interferes with daily life. The study also collects data on mental health and opioid consumption over time. This is a comparative effectiveness trial funded by PCORI’s PLACER program, designed to generate robust evidence on treatments that, like ketamine, are already used in clinical practice but lack large-scale backing.
What this implies
It is important to keep this in perspective: this is the start of a trial, not a result. There is no efficacy or safety data to report yet, and the first outcomes will not arrive in months but in years, given the project’s seven-year horizon. However, it does signal the place ketamine has earned in pain medicine outside of psychiatry: here, the goal is not its antidepressant or dissociative effect, but its role as an adjuvant analgesic at sub-anesthetic doses—a different but related path to the one that has driven its use in mental health. The scale of the trial, 1,800 people and specific public funding, suggests there is genuine institutional interest in determining whether this use reduces opioid dependence after traumatic surgery, one of the most common entry points for long-term use of these drugs. We will have to wait for the first partial results to see if that promise holds up with data.
Source
- NYU Langone Health. NYU Langone Health to Lead New Trial of Ketamine for Pain Relief. NYU Langone News, August 25, 2026.
Educational content written from a harm reduction perspective and with respect for individual freedom. It is not a substitute for advice from a healthcare professional and is not intended to encourage or condemn any drug use.
