INTRODUCTION: Acute pain remains a major clinical problem worldwide across postoperative and other acute-care settings, yet current therapies are often limited by inadequate efficacy, opioid-related risks, central nervous system adverse effects, or gastrointestinal, renal, and hepatic toxicity associated with conventional non-opioid analgesics. Suzetrigine (Journavx) is a first-in-class, non-opioid sodium channel blocker approved for moderate-to-severe acute pain in adults, with pivotal evidence from postoperative pain models, introducing selective NaV1.8 inhibition as a novel pharmacologic strategy in acute pain management. AREAS COVERED: This review evaluates the mechanistic rationale, clinical pharmacology, efficacy, safety, and likely therapeutic positioning of suzetrigine. Particular emphasis is placed on its selective peripheral analgesic mechanism, short-course oral dosing strategy, and pivotal randomized postoperative pain trials following full abdominoplasty and bunionectomy. The review also considers analgesic magnitude, onset of pain relief, active-comparator interpretation, CYP3A-mediated interactions, hepatic-impairment precautions, duration-of-use limits, and the potential role of suzetrigine within opioid-sparing and multimodal analgesic strategies. EXPERT OPINION: Suzetrigine is important less as a replacement for existing therapies than as a new peripheral, non-opioid analgesic pathway. Its long-term clinical value will depend on comparative effectiveness, real-world uptake, cost, and demonstrable reduction in opioid use or opioid-related adverse events in routine care.
Zaman et al. (2026) studied this question.