Amnesia, pain experience, and patient satisfaction after sedation with intravenous diazepam

Recovery time, the effect of sedation or amnesia on postoperative pain, and patients' opinions of the sedation were studied. Forty operations were performed on 20 patients. Each patient had four impacted third molars removed in two sessions, one in which a new emulsion form of diazepam (Diazemuls) was used, and one in which no sedation was used. The recovery from sedation was found to be very individual and not related to the dose administered, as assessed by a simple, easy-to-use method. There was no difference in postoperative pain between the sedated and unsedated groups, and we found no correlation between postoperative pain and amnesia. Eighty-five per cent of the patients preferred sedation during surgery, even though none of them had a preoperative indication for sedation.