Pediatric Sedation: The Asian Approach - Current State of Sedation in China

Abstract

In China, the need for sedation and analgesia for both diagnostic and therapeutic procedures performed outside the operating room has increased dramatically in recent years. In China there are currently no national guidelines on providing sedation to either children or adults. Hong Kong, although a Special Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), has its own independent Academy of Medicine, which does issue guidelines. For the purpose of this chapter, the authors will consider Hong Kong as separate from China, since currently the two regions approach sedation in a vastly different manner. In order to understand the current state of pediatric sedation, a survey was sent to 41 hospitals, all members of the Pediatric Anesthesia Association in China. The size of hospitals ranged from 500 to 4,200 beds and the number of pediatric operations performed in these hospitals ranged from 3,000 to 60,000 in 2012. The response rate was 53.6 %. Of the 22 completed surveys, five hospitals responded that they had no sedation service (their surveys were not returned) and two indicated that anesthesiologists are not involved in their sedation services.