Following are the therapeutic uses of opioid analgesics :
1. Pain relief: By any and all the possible routes, these drugs have been given to relieve the pain—acute, surgical, non-surgical, visceral, somatic, chronic, and oncogenic, non-oncogenic.
2. Morphine is drug of choice in IHD, myocardial infarction, obstetric analgesia.
3. Dyspnoea: Especially due to left ventricular failure and pulmonary oedema.
4. Control of diarrhoea: Loperamide, diphenoxylate.
5. Combination of droperidol with fentanyl (50:1, 2.5 mg + 50 pg) for neurolept analgesia.
Therapeutic uses of opioid analgesics also include: TTS—Transdermal Therapeutic System, OTFC (Oral Transmucosal Fentanyl Citrate).