Pentobarbital (US) or pentobarbitone (British and Australian) is a short-acting barbiturate typically used as a sedative, a preanesthetic, and to control convulsions in emergencies.

[4][failed verification] Pentobarbital was developed by Ernest H. Volwiler and Donalee L. Tabern [de] at Abbott Laboratories in 1930.

Typical applications for pentobarbital are sedative, short term hypnotic, preanesthetic, insomnia treatment, and control of convulsions in emergencies.

[3] Abbott Pharmaceutical discontinued manufacture of their Nembutal brand of Pentobarbital capsules in 1999, largely replaced by the benzodiazepine family of drugs.

Pentobarbital can reduce intracranial pressure in Reye's syndrome, treat traumatic brain injury and induce coma in cerebral ischemia patients.

[15] Pentobarbital has been used or considered as a substitute for the barbiturate sodium thiopental used for capital punishment by lethal injection in the United States when that drug became unavailable.

Use of the drug for executions is illegal under Danish law, and when this was discovered, after public outcry in Danish media, Lundbeck stopped selling it to US states that impose the death penalty and prohibited US distributors from selling it to any customers, such as state authorities, that practice or participate in executions of humans.

[17] Texas began using the single-drug pentobarbital protocol for executing death-row inmates on 18 July 2012,[18] because of a shortage of pancuronium bromide, a muscle paralytic previously used as one component of a three-drug cocktail.

[20][21] According to a December 2020 ProPublica article, by 2017 the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), in discussion with then Attorney General Jeff Sessions, had begun to search for suppliers of pentobarbital to be used in lethal injections.

[22] On 25 July 2019, US Attorney General William Barr directed the federal government to resume capital punishment after 16 years.

[26] Administration of ethanol, benzodiazepines, opioids, antihistamines, other sedative-hypnotics, and other central nervous system depressants will cause possible additive effects.