Procedural Aspects Affecting Sedation Care

The goals of sedation for both diagnostic and therapeutic procedures are to manage preprocedural anxiety, minimize pain, and allow for successful completion of the procedure without adverse patient outcomes. To plan the appropriate way to achieve these goals, the sedationist must decide whether the procedure will cause the patient pain (invasiveness), the degree of immobility required for the procedure to be completed effectively, and the duration of time for which sedation is needed. If systemic medications are needed to manage the patient and procedural goals, they should be selected based on the duration of sedation necessary. Pain control can often be effectively managed with local injectable or topical techniques. It is the sedationist’s responsibility to choose a medication, or combination of medications, that allows for administration of the lowest dose of drug(s) possible while providing the greatest effective therapeutic effect.