Possible Interaction: Glucose and Sufentanil

“Conclusion: The addition of dextrose 3.5% to intrathecal sufentanil reduced the incidence of pruritus without affecting the duration or quality of analgesia in parturients in early labour.”

“Conclusions Little or no labor analgesia developed for patients receiving sufentanil with dextrose.”

“ Dextrose 7.5% did not affect cephalad spread, as measured by block height to pin testing, but it did significantly reduce the duration of analgesia and the incidence of pruritus from IT sufentanil administered to patients in the sitting position compared with patients in the lateral position.”

“Implications: The authors conclude that the addition of dextrose to intrathecal sufentanil injected into patients in the sitting position reduces the duration of analgesia without significantly reducing side effects with the exception of pruritus, and therefore does not improve the clinical utility of intrathecal sufentanil. (”

“We hypothesized that the addition of dextrose to IT sufentanil injected with women in the sitting position would limit cephalad spread and side effects.”

“The authors conclude that the “addition of dextrose to intrathecal sufentanil limits the spread of adequate concentrations of sufentanil in the low thoracic region of the spinal cord” and, therefore, that patients in the sitting group did not have pain relief.”

“Paradoxically, sufentanil inhibited this endotoxin-induced stimulation of glucose production (P < 0.05 vs. endotoxin alone).”

“A significant decrease of sufentanil was observed when stored at 32°C after 30 days when diluted with glucose (9.2%) or in combination with bupivacaine (8.9%); also, the bupivacaine concentration decreased significantly (4.7%).”

“Paradoxically, sufentanil inhibited this endotoxin-induced stimulation of glucose production ( P < 0.05 vs. endotoxin alone).”