My wife had them done two places: the first was Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston by Dr. Zahid Bajwa. Great guy and staff - she was treated very well. There they only do the low dose version - about a max of 40mg/hr. My wife was allowed to do the in-patient version which is five days straight of infusions in the hospital. She had good results - took about two days to get pain relief - but it didn't last much past a couple of days post-hospital visit.

The second place we tried was at the RSD/CRPS Rsearch Institute and Treatment Center in Tampa run my Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick. Dr. Kirkpatrick is the U.S. coordinator of the Monterey, Mexico Ketamine coma study. In his protocol, he conducts a series of three outpatient 4-hr infusions over a three day period. He does a much higher dose, raised upward each day as tolerated, to a max dosage of 135mg/hr. (The coma version has doses of 250-600 mg/hr to give a reference) In this procedure, the patient is maintained in a state of conscious sedation which the FDA requires in the U.S. My wife got much better results from this though again, after about two weeks this time, the pain started coming back and she was back to square one about a month later. Sounds great though, a month of pain relief, but Dr. Kirkpatrick does not accept insurance and each infusion is $2,500 with 80% required up front. Thus, it is extremely difficult to continue to pay for. Ultimately (which is also Dr. Kirkpatrick's goal) local providers will use this same protocol (which is available from him) and bill it through your insurance.

However, a new question thus arises: Has anyone who received Ketamine infusions then experienced MORE spread of the RSD/CRPS symptoms? Prior to th Ketamine, the RSD for my wife did not spread from the facial area, though following this treatment, it has spread far and wide (an she suffered from the original site symptoms for more than 10 years.)

To also follow-up on my own questions:

In speaking with some of the researchers it appears that the shocks may have to do with sharp changes in the current provided to the brain - either in ramping the current up or down too quickly or in poor contact and conductivity between the electrode and scalp. The second situation seems likely in our case - where the saline used to wet the gauze covered electrode may have dried out too much. We will be trying again with conducting gel as well as electrodes with sponge inserts - much like they are using at Beth Israel.

For those interested, I will post later the details of the procedure as well as the publications which can be found regarding its efficacy.