Elucidation of Analgesic Effects of Butorphanol Compared with Morphine: A Prospective Cohort Study

Abstract

Pain is a complex subjective experience comprising of both physical and emotional components. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of damage.”Opioids are essentially important constituent of balanced anaesthesia. They provide adequate analgesia, reduces requirement of inhaled anaesthetic agents, maintain cardiovascular stability and provide adequate post-operative analgesia. Morphine remains the most widely used analgesic and the gold standard against which all new opioids are compared. Butorphanol has been employed successfully for the relief of postoperative pain, labor pain, preanaesthetic medication and in balanced anaesthesia. We studied the analgesic property and the side effects of butorphanol and compared them with equipotent dose of morphine. This study revealed that butorphanol had more or less similar effects on haemodynamic parameters as compared to morphine. But butorphanol showed fewer side effects than morphine. This study suggested that patient compliance was on butorphanol.