Comparison between fentanyl and sufentanil analgesic effect on spinal anesthesia

One of the main objectives of anesthesia is “loss of ability to feel pain (analgesia) and there are different methods and drugs to acquire this. Spinal anesthesia with lidocaine 5% is a method of causing analgesia whose period is about 60 minutes. Since lengthier analgesia is required in some surgeries and using opiates is one of the methods to prolong anesthesia, in this research sufentanil and fentanyl were used in spinal anesthesia to discover which is a more effective drug. In this clinical trial research 80 men aged between 50 and 60 years who had been hospitalized in Gonabad Panzdeh-e-khordad hospital in 2006 for inguinal hernia operation were studied. The patients were randomly divided into two equal groups of 40 each. In one group(F) 20µg fentanyl with 100mg lidocaine 5% and in the other group (S) one 5µg sufentanil together with the same dose of lidocaine was used for spinal anesthesia. A check-list and a questionnaire were used to record the necessary data. The obtained data was analyzed by means of SPSS software using statistical t-test; and P<0.05 was taken as the significant level. Mean of analgesia period in group F was 99.37±18.61 minutes and in group S it was 153.62±26.62 minutes; so there was a significant difference between the two groups regarding the period of analgesia (P<0.001). In group F the occurance of hypotension was 37.5%, bradycardia 27.5%, and nausea and vomiting was 10%;but in group S they were 40%, 32.5%, and 15% respectively. The difference was not statistically significant. Regarding the results of this study, analgesia in spinal anesthesia with sufentanil was lengthier than analgesia caused by fentanyl; and there was a significant difference between the effects of the two drugs (P<0.001). But there was not significant differences in hypotension, bradycardia; and nausea and vomiting. So it is recommended to use sufentanil instead of fentanyl in spinal anesthesia if analgesia for more than100 minutes is required.