Sublingual Sufentanil: A Review in Acute Postoperative Pain

The sufentanil sublingual tablet system (SSTS; Zalviso(®)) is a novel patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) device intended to overcome some of the drawbacks of opioid-based intravenous PCA (IV-PCA). Based on the results of three phase III studies, the SSTS has been approved in the EU for the management of acute moderate to severe postoperative pain in adults in a hospital setting. In a head-to-head comparison with morphine, the gold standard for opioid-based IV-PCA, the SSTS was associated with a more rapid onset of analgesia and higher rates of success, based on patient and healthcare professional global assessments of the method of pain control. Patients and healthcare professionals also rated the SSTS as being easier to use and expressed a greater level of overall satisfaction with this device. The SSTS was generally well tolerated, with an adverse event profile typical of that of other opioids and generally similar to that of placebo. By virtue of its preprogrammed, noninvasive design, the SSTS avoids the risk of pump programming errors and other complications (e.g. infections and analgesic gaps) that can occur with IV-PCA technology; it also imposes less restriction on postoperative mobility. As such, the SSTS provides an effective alternative to opioid-based IV-PCA for the management of acute moderate to severe postoperative pain. Future studies should ideally focus on evaluating the relative cost effectiveness of the SSTS and comparing it with other available needle-free PCA modalities.