Butorphanol is an analgesic which is commonly used for the management of perioperative pain. In comparison with sufentanil, butorphanol when used along with propofol as anesthesia for GI endoscopy proved to be an outstanding sedation approach which lessens the recovery time.

The clinical efficacy (particularly recovery time) of 95% effective dose (ED95) of butorphanol and sufentanil in GI endoscopy has been distinguished in this double-blind, randomized study.

The study have into divided into 2 sections, i.e. in the first section, the voluntary patients who needed GI endoscopy anesthesia were enrolled to calculate the ED₉₅ of butorphanol and sufentanil needed to achieve successful sedation prior to GI endoscopy via Dixon up-and-down method (sequential method). The second section was a randomized study comprising of 200 cases of painless GI endoscopy patients, randomly allocated in 2 groups (100 patients each) as group B (butorphanol at ED₉₅ dose) and group S (sufentanil at ED₉₅ dose). Propofol was used as a sedative given intravenously in both the groups. Fatigue severity scores, time of recovery, visual analogue scale (VAS), hand grip strength, occurrence of nausea, vomiting and dizziness noted carefully.

Butorphanol and sufentanil at ED₉₅ dose for painless GI endoscopy was found to be 9.07 μg/kg (95% confidence interval: 7.81–19.66 μg/kg) and 0.1 μg/kg (95% CI, 0.079–0.422 μg/kg), respectively. Both of these were good analgesics for GI endoscopy. But, butorphanol had a significantly shorter recovery time as compared to sufentanil (21.26 ± 7.70 versus 24.03 ± 7.80 min).

As concluded, butorphanol 9.07 μg/kg more efficiently provided GI endoscopy sedation as compared to sufentanil.