Gender differences in the effective dose of alfentanil in painless bronchoscopy

[摘要] In a previous edition of this Journal, an interesting study (1) was presented addressing the effective dose of alfentanil in suppressing bronchoscopy responses to painless bronchoscopy with an i-gel supraglottic airway device. Their main findings suggested that the ED50 of alfentanil for suppressing responses to painless bronchoscopy in females and males was 13.68±4.75 and 17.96±3.45 μg/kg, respectively, and no significant difference (P=0.078) was observed between them. These results may provide a reference for clinicians to use alfentanil in painless bronchoscopy with no need to consider the influence of gender factors. As animal and human studies have suggested that there existed gender differences in opioid-induced analgesia and associated adverse events (2-5), clinicians need to be aware of the gender differences when administering opioids (6). The authors have studied a very interesting topic and provided novel evidence on this matter, though more investigations are needed to confirm the results.

[学科分类] 呼吸医学