biology

Sufentanil

Sufentanil is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Sufentanil rather than just read about it. In short: Sufentanil, sold under the brand names Sufenta among others, is a synthetic opioid analgesic drug approximately 5 to 10 times as potent as its parent drug, fentanyl, and 500 to 1,000 times as potent as morphine. Structurally, sufentanil differs from fentanyl through the addition of a methoxymethyl group on the piperidine ring (which increases potency but is believed to reduce duration of action), and the replacement…

Key takeaways

Sufentanil belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Sufentanil to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Sufentanil from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Sufentanil, sold under the brand names Sufenta among others, is a synthetic opioid analgesic drug approximately 5 to 10 times as potent as its parent drug, fentanyl, and 500 to 1,000 times as potent as morphine. Structurally, sufentanil differs from fentanyl through the addition of a methoxymethyl group on the piperidine ring (which increases potency but is believed to reduce duration of action), and the replacement of the phenyl ring by thiophene. Sufentanil first was synthesized at Janssen Pharmaceutica in 1974.

Medical uses Sufentanil offers properties of sedation and can be used as analgesic component of anesthetic regimen during an operation. Because of its extremely high potency, it is often used in surgery and post-operative pain management for patients that are heavily opioid dependent/opioid tolerant because of long term opiate use for chronic pain or illicit opiate use. It is also used in surgery and post-operative pain control in people that are taking high dose buprenorphine for chronic pain because it has the potency and binding affinity strong enough to displace buprenorphine from the opioid receptors in the central nervous system and provide analgesia. In 2018, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Dsuvia, a sublingual tablet form of the drug, that was developed in a collaboration between AcelRx Pharmaceuticals and the United States Department of Defense for use in battlefield settings where intravenous (IV) treatments may not be readily available. The decision to approve this new potent synthetic opioid came under criticism from politicians and from the chair of the FDA advisory committee, who fear that the tablets will be easily diverted to the illegal drug market. Dsuvia has since been withdrawn from the market due to "unresolvable manufacturing constraints."

Society and culture

Brand names Sufentanil is marketed under various brand names including Dsuvia, Dzuveo, Sufenta, and Sufentil.

Veterinary use Sufentanil is used both as an analgesic and as part of an anaesthetic protocol. In cats the half-life of sufentanil is longer than that of fentanyl and alfentanil. In dogs sufentanil produces a better anaesthetic recovery with similar analgesic and respiratory depression than fentanyl. One report suggest that for post-operative pain bupivacaine and sufentanil provides greater analgesia than fentanyl and bupivacaine in dogs. There is little information on the use of sufentanil in large animals. Due to the greater risk of cardiovascular and respiratory depression sufentanil is rarely used in practice.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Sufentanil

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Sufentanil claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Sufentanil before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Sufentanil ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Sufentanil

In research: Sufentanil appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Sufentanil in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Sufentanil is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Anilides, Belgian inventions, Ethers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Sufentanil outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Sufentanil in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Sufentanil means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Sufentanil out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sufentanil in simple terms?

Why does Sufentanil matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Sufentanil?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Sufentanil.