Safety and Efficacy of Opioid-sparing Anesthesia Compared With Traditional Opioid Anesthesia: A Scoping Review.

Objectives: The rationale of adoption opioid-sparing anesthesia (OSA) is to achieve perioperative analgesia with a minimal amount of opioids combined with nonopioid adjuvants during and after surgery, namely multimodal anesthesia. The OSA approach was originally developed to overcome the known complications of opioid-based anesthesia (OA), and the present scoping review (ScR) aims at providing clinical evidence of the safety and efficacy of OSA with respect to OA.

Methods: This ScR is mainly focused on studies presenting evidence on the safety and efficacy of OSA versus OA. PubMed and EMBASE databases were utilized to find relevant studies. The search strategy included the following keywords: "opioid sparing anesthesia complications, opioid sparing anesthesia efficacy, opioid sparing anesthesia safety." The findings from the 25 included studies were categorized into the following subsections: article characteristics, goals of the studies, OSA protocols, and surgical settings analyzed.

Results: In the 25 reviewed studies, evidence related to the impact of OSA versus OA was considered. Intraoperative safety and efficacy end points include hemodynamic stability and anesthetic/analgesic requirements. Postoperative end points include early cognitive dysfunction, opioid-induced bowel disorder, the physical status of mothers and newborns after labor and emergency cesarean, systemic immune and inflammation modifications, postoperative recovery, in-hospital and long-term opioid requirement, early postoperative pain, and chronic postsurgical pain. The studies reported lower intraoperative mean arterial pressure and heart rate fluctuations when α 2 agonists were adopted, while no differences were recorded for other complication rates. Analysis of OSA approaches for the postoperative conditions includes α 2 agonists, NMDA receptor blocking agents, gabapentinoids, nefopam hydrochloride, and locoregional anesthesia techniques with a positive impact on most of the end points considered.

Discussion: The clinical implementation of OSA encompasses the perioperative use of nonopioid drugs and locoregional anesthesia techniques. The reviewed studies reported OSA as a feasible approach to reduce opioid-related complications with no impact on patient safety.