Sedation in children outside the operating room: The rules of the road

SummaryChildren undergoing tests and treatments often require sedation, frequently in environments remote from the operating room. This article reviews national guidelines focusing on the safe provision of anesthesia for children remote from the operating room, demonstrating the evolution in care and increasing complexity faced by anesthesia and sedation providers. The weaknesses in the current literature about this topic are also discussed with different approaches to assessing efficacy of sedation/anesthesia explored, focusing on the use of pooled data from multiple institutions, the human factors aspects of sedation and simulation based training.