Abstract
Critically ill patients in the intensive care unit are under stress due to pain, anxiety, discomfort by endotracheal intubation. It is not only humane but also leads to reduce the morbidity of post-traumatic stress syndrome to sedate these patients using sedatives and analgesics. In addition sympathetic strain due to pain and anxiety can affect on patients' outcome. Appropriate sedative should be chosen by taking the half-life in the blood, organ function metabolizing the sedative, activity of metabolite, adverse effect of the sedative and cost into account. At present there is no single drug which can cover all the patients including pediatric patients in the intensive care unit. Further studies are required to evaluate new sedatives, scaling system of sedation assessment and bispectral index in the view of patients' outcome.
