Anesthesiology
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Desirable product attributes for treatment of moderate-to-severe acute pain in many medically supervised settings are rapid onset and a route of administration not requiring intravenous access. The pharmacokinetic characteristics of sublingually administered tablets containing 15 or 30 µg of sufentanil are described. ⋯ The time course of a single 30-µg dose was consistent with onset of analgesia and redosing frequency observed in clinical trials. Sublingual sufentanil tablets provide the opportunity to noninvasively and rapidly treat moderate-to-severe pain in a monitored setting.
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Comparative Study
Benefit versus Severe Side Effects of Opioid Analgesia: Novel Utility Functions of Probability of Analgesia and Respiratory Depression.
Previous studies integrated opioid benefit and harm into one single function-the utility function-to determine the drug toxicity (respiratory depression) in light of its wanted effect (analgesia). This study further refined the concept of the utility function using the respiratory and analgesic effects of the opioid analgesic alfentanil as example. ⋯ The utility function was successfully further developed, allowing assessment of specific conditions in terms of wanted and unwanted effects. This approach can be used to compare the toxic effects of drugs relative to their intended effect and may be a useful tool in the development of new compounds to assess their advantage over existing drugs.
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Sufentanil is used for general anesthesia and analgesia. The study aim was to determine the effect of pharmacologically induced changes in cardiac output on the pharmacokinetics of sufentanil in anesthetized pigs. ⋯ Cardiac output influences the pharmacokinetics of sufentanil. Simulations suggest that in the case of increased cardiac output, the dose should be increased to avoid inadequate drug effect at the expense of prolonged recovery, whereas for low cardiac output the dose should be reduced, and a faster recovery may be expected.