A review of intravenous sedatives in the ICU emphasizing the need for careful monitoring and the lack of an ideal agent.
Requires cautious ICU sedation monitoring with current agents; leaves open the need for novel sedatives.
Intensive care clinicians prescribe sedatives to ensure patients are comfortable, cooperative, and can tolerate the delivery of critical care with minimum risk of oversedation and side effects. It is important to monitor the level of sedation and to be aware of the many pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic changes that occur in the critically ill patient with the various drug groups. Drugs used for sedation during intensive care include benzodiazepines, propofol, α2-agonists (clonidine), neuroleptic agents (haloperidol, droperidol, phenothiazines), and ketamine. Few novel approaches to sedation of critically ill patients have been described recently, but none of the intravenous sedatives currently available is ideal.
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Dobb et al. (1999) studied this question.
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