About us
The Ketamine Research Institute
A single-specialty center in Sarasota, Florida. We do one thing: ketamine-based infusion therapy, given by a physician, measured before and after.
What we do
One thing, and not the rest
We are not a general practice that also offers infusions. Ketamine-based therapy is the only treatment we provide, and it is the only thing the center is set up to do.
That narrowness is deliberate. It is what makes it possible to treat one patient at a time, to keep a physician in the room for the whole of every infusion, and to score every patient on a validated scale before treatment and afterward, so that whether it worked is a question with an answer.
Doing one thing constantly is also how you learn what normal looks like, and how you notice the day it is not.
One patient at a time, in a suite kept quiet for that reason.
How the practice is set up
Three things that follow from that
The RESTORE Method sets out how the dosing is calculated and why, with the published work it rests on.
Our limits
What we do not do
- We do not treat conditions where the evidence is preliminary, however often we are asked — including neurodegenerative disease and post-viral syndromes
- We do not prescribe take-home ketamine in any form: no lozenges, no nasal spray, no oral formulation
- We do not treat without records, and we do not advise anyone to stop or change psychiatric medication — that is the prescriber’s decision
- We do not accept patients we do not think are likely to benefit
That is easier to write than to do, and it is the reason the conditions page lists what we decline as plainly as what we treat.
Where the method came from
Built here, over a long time
The first controlled trial of ketamine for depression was published from Yale in 2000.1 The Institute’s founder had been using ketamine clinically since 1989, through training in neurosurgery, emergency medicine and anesthesiology, at a time when it was an anesthetic and nothing more. He later held a faculty appointment in anesthesiology and pain medicine at that institution and directed its Pain Medicine Fellowship Program.
RESTORE was not taken from a protocol in the literature and put into practice. It was developed here from the published pharmacokinetics of ketamine and from the way the drug actually distributes in the body, and it has been revised since against our own outcome data.
Teaching
We teach the method rather than keep it
Licensed clinicians travel here for classroom instruction and supervised clinical training in a working infusion suite. The reason is straightforward: a method used in one center in Florida helps very few people.
Research
What is exploratory, and labeled as such
We follow the research on ketamine in conditions beyond the ones we treat, and we review our own outcomes as a group rather than by impression.
Exploratory interest is not an offer of treatment. Where we are reading or thinking about a condition we do not treat, that is what it is, and we will say so if you ask.
Reference
1. Berman RM, Cappiello A, Anand A, et al. Antidepressant effects of ketamine in depressed patients. Biol Psychiatry. 2000;47(4):351–354. PMID 10686270.
Related pages
Conditions We Treat Are You a Candidate? Safety, Risks and Limits Fees Contact
Talk to us
Now you know about us. Tell us about you.
The first call is free, and we will tell you honestly whether this is worth going further with.
RESTORE — ketamine therapy, done precisely.