Ketamine for Chronic Back Pain
When the pain is the first thing you feel in the morning and the last thing at night — and injections, therapy, and medications haven't ended it — the question becomes whether your pain has a neurological component that a different treatment can reach.
You've Done the Circuit.
The Pain Didn't Get the Memo.
Physical therapy. Anti-inflammatories. Epidural injections. Maybe surgery — maybe more than one. Chronic back pain is the most common chronic pain in America, and the standard toolkit fails a frustrating share of the people who faithfully work through it. Often that's because long-standing back pain stops being purely structural: the nervous system sensitizes, nerve injury adds a neuropathic layer, and the pain begins running partly on its own signaling rather than only on what the MRI shows.
Treating the Neurological Layer
Ketamine doesn't fix discs or joints — and we'll never pretend it does. What it targets is the sensitized signaling layered on top: NMDA-receptor-driven wind-up and centralization, plus any neuropathic component from nerve involvement, along with the depression that chronic back pain so reliably brings. For back-pain patients whose suffering has outgrown their imaging, that neurological layer is often the part no previous treatment addressed.
Honest framing — the most candid on this site: Chronic back pain has the most limited ketamine evidence of the pain conditions we treat. Support comes from the broader neuropathic-pain and central-sensitization literature and from clinical use in refractory patients, rather than from large back-pain-specific trials. Ketamine here is off-label, decidedly not first-line, and appropriate only for selected patients with a neuropathic or centralized component who have genuinely exhausted conventional care. If your pain picture doesn't fit that, we'll tell you at the consultation and save you the money.
How We Evaluate Back Pain at Desert Sands
Your evaluation looks specifically for the features that predict ketamine responsiveness: neuropathic characteristics (burning, shooting, radiating pain), signs of central sensitization, failed conventional treatment, and co-occurring mood impact — alongside your surgical history, medications, and screening for pain-protocol infusions. Treatment protocols are physician-directed and supported by experienced clinical staff under the medical oversight of board-certified anesthesiologist Dr. Eric Evans, whose more than 30 years of clinical experience help guide the highest standards of patient safety, comfort, and care. When treatment proceeds, it follows our pain protocol — longer, titrated infusions in a private room with continuous monitoring, delivered as a series with honestly assessed maintenance. We coordinate with your spine or pain specialist whenever you'd like, and treatment complements rather than replaces the physical rehabilitation your back still deserves.
Patient Selection
- Have chronic back pain with burning, shooting, or radiating neuropathic features
- Have failed comprehensive conventional care — therapy, medications, injections, possibly surgery
- Have "failed back surgery syndrome" or persistent post-surgical nerve pain
- Are seeking a non-opioid option, or working to reduce opioid reliance with your prescriber
- Purely mechanical or structural pain without neuropathic features — other treatments fit better, and we'll say so
- Back pain not yet evaluated or treated conventionally — that comes first
- Red-flag symptoms (new weakness, numbness in the saddle area, bowel or bladder changes) — those need urgent medical evaluation, not an infusion
- Uncontrolled blood pressure, significant liver disease, psychosis history, or unevaluated substance-use concerns
Outcomes, Honestly Stated
In appropriately selected patients — the neuropathic, centralized, everything-else-failed group — responders experience meaningful reduction in pain intensity for a period of weeks after a treatment series, often with sleep and mood improving alongside, and that window frequently makes physical rehabilitation newly possible. Response is less predictable in back pain than in CRPS, some patients don't respond, and we measure against your own baseline and give you a straight answer about whether continuing is justified.
Risks and side effects
During and shortly after infusion, patients may experience dissociation, elevated blood pressure or heart rate, nausea, dizziness, or drowsiness — typically temporary, with most resolving within about two hours. Pain protocols involve larger cumulative exposure, so screening covers liver and bladder health with exposure tracked across your course. Every patient is monitored continuously, and you'll need a ride home after each session.
What the Research Shows
The case for ketamine in back pain rests on the neuropathic-pain trial literature, the consensus guidelines supporting IV ketamine for selected refractory chronic pain, and clinical experience in patients with centralized pain — not on large back-pain-specific RCTs, which don't yet exist. We state that plainly because patients who've been oversold before deserve a clinic that doesn't.
Back Pain FAQ
My MRI shows real damage — is ketamine still relevant?
Possibly. Structural findings and centralized pain aren't mutually exclusive — many people have both, which is why pain often persists after successful surgery. The evaluation determines how much of your pain runs on the layer ketamine can reach.
Can this help me get off opioids?
For some patients, ketamine provides enough relief to support an opioid taper — always managed with your prescriber, never abruptly, and discussed honestly at your evaluation as a goal rather than a promise.
Your Pain Deserves a Straight Answer —
Even If It's Not Us
Your free consultation is an honest assessment of whether your back pain has the neurological component ketamine can treat. If it doesn't, we'll tell you.
Request Your Free ConsultationCall (435) 522-5190This page is for educational purposes and is not medical advice. Ketamine is FDA-approved as an anesthetic; its use for chronic back pain is off-label with limited condition-specific evidence as described above. Individual results vary and are not guaranteed. Reading this page or submitting a form does not create a provider-patient relationship. New weakness, saddle numbness, or bowel/bladder changes with back pain require emergency evaluation — call 911 or go to the ER.