THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TRANSDERMAL BUPRENORPHINE IN THE TREATMENT OF ACUTE PAIN

Abstract

Pain remains the most common reason for seeking care in emergency services. Transdermal buprenorphine is an opoid patch that adheres to the skin and releases the analgesic over a period of several days. Objectives: to identify whether transdermal buprenorphine is effective in the treatment of acute pain. Materials and methods: This is an integrative review, the guiding question was “Is transdermal buprenorphine effective in the treatment of acute pain?”. The search for articles took place in the main databases based on the terms “efficacy”, “transdermal buprenorphine” and “acute pain”, combined with each other by Boolean operators. Results and discussion: Buprenorphine is a synthetic opioid that acts as a partial agonist at mu opioid receptors and as an antagonist at kappa and delta receptors. Research has shown that it has a ceiling effect and is 75 to 100 times more potent than morphine. It was observed that the moment of the first postoperative need for rescue analgesic was delayed in the transdermal buprenorphine group compared to the placebo group. Most studies concluded that transdermal buprenorphine decreases postoperative analgesic consumption. Most studies in the systematic review show no increase in adverse drug reactions. Conclusion: Topical buprenorphine can be used safely in patients, being a reliable and economical method of controlling acute pain, it is 75 to 100 times more potent than morphine and is well tolerated in high doses.