What is "fentanyl"

n. (context pharmaceutical drug English) A particular narcotic painkiller.

Fentanyl (also known as fentanil, brand names Sublimaze, Actiq, Durogesic, Duragesic, Fentora, Matrifen, Haldid, Onsolis, Instanyl, Abstral, Lazanda and others) is a potent, synthetic opioid analgesic with a rapid onset and short duration of action. It is a strong agonist at the μ-opioid receptors. Fentanyl is estimated to have 50 times the potency as pure, pharmacy-grade heroin and about 100 times the potency of morphine.

Fentanyl was first synthesized by Paul Janssen in 1960, following the medical inception of pethidine (also known as meperidine, marketed as Demerol) several years earlier. Janssen developed fentanyl by assaying analogues of the structurally related drug pethidine for opioid activity. The widespread use of fentanyl triggered the production of fentanyl citrate (the salt formed by combining fentanyl and citric acid in a 1:1 stoichiometry), which entered the clinical practice as a general anaesthetic under the trade name Sublimaze in the 1960s. Following this, many other fentanyl analogues were developed and introduced into medical practice, including sufentanil, alfentanil, remifentanil, and lofentanil.

In the mid-1990s, fentanyl was first introduced for widespread palliative use with the clinical introduction of the Duragesic patch, followed in the next decade by the introduction of the first quick-acting prescription formulations of fentanyl for personal use, the Actiq lollipop and Fentora dissolving tablets, which are resorbed through the buccal mucosa. fentanyl was the most widely used synthetic opioid in clinical practice, with several new delivery methods now available, including a sublingual spray for cancer patients. In 2013, 1700 kilograms were used globally.

Fentanyl is also used as a recreational drug, and this use has led to hundreds of overdose deaths each year in recent years. Deaths have also resulted from improper medical use. Fentanyl has a relatively wide therapeutic index (270) which makes it a very safe surgical anesthetic when monitored carefully, however its extreme potency requires careful measurements of highly diluted fentanyl in solution; attempting to accurately measure a dose of pure fentanyl powder is impractical without advanced scientific equipment as an effective dose and a lethal dose of fentanyl powder placed next to each other would be difficult or impossible to differentiate with the naked eye.