Pediatric emergency care
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Pediatric emergency care · Dec 2004
Multicenter StudyThe effect of fasting practice on sedation with chloral hydrate.
Infants undergo various painless imaging procedures frequently. Mild sedation is required in such cases to reduce anxiety as well as to ensure optimal performance of the procedure. The most frequently used sedative as a single drug is chloral hydrate. The issue of preprocedural fasting is a subject of contention. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)/American Society of Anesthesiology (ASA) fasting practice guidelines on the efficacy and success of the sedation with chloral hydrate. ⋯ Fasting was associated with an increased failure rate of the initial sedation. As a consequence, an increased total dose of chloral hydrate was required inducing a prolonged sedation time. Presumably, this is a result of the fact that a hungry child is irritable and therefore more difficult to sedate.