Drugs for Procedural Sedation and Analgesia in Children: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Performing medical procedures on children can often be challenging because of the anxiety that these procedures may induce, the need for immobility that they may require, or age-related development capabilities. We assessed the effects of procedural sedation and analgesia drugs for anxiety management in children during medical procedures.

We searched PubMed Medline, Cochrane Library, American Academy of Pediatrics, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, ClinicalTrials.gov, and references of eligible studies. We included parallel-arm randomized controlled trials comparing different active drugs of procedural sedation and analgesia in children undergoing diagnostic or therapeutic, painful or nonpainful procedures. Two authors independently screened titles/abstracts, reviewed full-texts, and extracted data related to study characteristics, methodology, participants, and results. Meta-analyses involved the Mantel-Haenszel random-effects approach.

We included 98 studies (9161 children) in the qualitative analysis and 50 in the quantitative analysis. The probability of successful sedation rate was associated with dexmedetomidine versus midazolam alone (odds ratio [OR] 7.42, 95% confidence interval [CI] 4.08-13.48) and with midazolam and ketamine combined versus midazolam alone (OR 3.0, 95% CI 1.67-5.39). The probability of successful sedation rate was associated with dexmedetomidine 2 μg/kg versus 1 μg/kg (OR 5.21, 95% CI 1.90-14.27).

Dexmedetomidine, and the combination of midazolam and ketamine, seem interesting for sedating children during medical procedures.