Background: Butorphanol, a synthetic opioid partial agonist analgesic, has been widely used for the control of perioperative pain. However, the ideal dose and availability of butorphanol for gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy are not well known. The aim of this study was to evaluated the 95% effective dose (ED95) of butorphanol and sufentanil in GI endoscopy and compared their clinical efficacy, especially the recovery time.Methods: The study was divided into two parts. For the first part, voluntary patients who needed GI endoscopy anesthesia were recruited to measure the ED95 of butorphanol and sufentanil when they reached successful sedation during GI endoscopy using the sequential method (the Dixon up-anddown method). In the second part, this was a double-blind, randomized study. Two hundred cases of painless GI endoscopy patients were randomly divided into two groups (n=100), including group B (butorphanol at the ED95 dose) and group S (sufentanil at the ED95 dose). Propofol was infused intravenously to both groups as the sedative. The recovery time, VAS (visual analogue scale) score, hand grip strength, fatigue severity scores, incidence of nausea and vomiting, and incidence of dizziness were recorded.Results: The ED95 of butorphanol in painless GI endoscopy was 9.07μg/kg (95% confidence interval: 7.81-19.66μg/kg). The ED95 of sufentanil was 0.1μg/kg (95% CI, 0.079-0.422μg/kg). Both butorphanol and sufentanil provided a good analgesic effect in GI endoscopy. However, the recovery time for butorphanol was significantly shorter than sufentanil (P<0.05, group B versus group S:21.26±7.70 vs.
24.03±7.80, min).Conclusions: Butorphanol at 9.07μg/kg showed a better effect compared with sufentanil in GI endoscopy sedation, notably reduced the recovery time.