Efficacy and Safety of Sufentanil Infusion for Postoperative Analgesia in Cancer Surgery: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Background Opioids have long been the cornerstone of drugs used for perioperative analgesia. Sufentanil has an advantageous pharmacological profile for its use in continuous intravenous (IV) infusion, yet remains poorly described. Our institution has implemented analgesia protocols with IV sufentanil infusions for cancer surgery with appropriate monitoring. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of IV sufentanil infusion. Methods A single-center retrospective cohort study was conducted through the analysis of patients’ records and the acute pain service database. Inclusion criteria were adult patients admitted for elective cancer surgery and with postoperative IV sufentanil infusion during one year period. Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis was performed by using Software SPSS Statistics (IBM Corp., Armonk USA): Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney, Chi-square and Fisher tests; Bonferroni chi-square residual analysis, binary logistic regression; p<0.05. Results The study population of 304 patients had a median age of 66 years (22-91) and 229 (75.3%) were men. 38 (12.5%) were chronic opioid users. Head and neck/otorhinolaryngology (ORL) surgery was performed in 155 (51.0%) and abdominopelvic surgery in 123 (40.5%). The median days of IV sufentanil infusion were 2 (1-13). At rest and with movement, analgesia was considered good, i.e., over 90% of patients with visual analogue scale (VAS) pain score ≤ 3. We found that patients submitted to musculoskeletal surgery had higher VAS pain scores; this group also presented older patients with higher American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) physical status classification and more chronic opioid users (p<0.05). 144 patients (47.4%) had at least one adverse effect related to IV sufentanil infusion, notably transient and not requiring any specific treatment. These patients were older and had longer infusion periods (p<0.05). 237 (98.3%) of the adverse effects occurred during the first 3 days and the most common were: sedation (n=104, 42.8%), hypotension (n=32, 13.2%), hypoxemia (n=31, 12.8%) and nausea/vomiting (n=25, 10.3%). The reported incidence of respiratory depression was 2.9% (n=9), with three patients (1%) requiring advanced treatment. Conclusion Multimodal analgesic protocols with IV sufentanil infusions provided good postoperative analgesia for head and neck/ORL and abdominopelvic cancer surgeries. The adverse effects associated with the IV sufentanil infusions were mild and mainly managed with opioid dose reductions. Our study showed that this approach can be a safe option for postoperative multimodal analgesia in cancer surgery with appropriate monitoring in high-dependency units.