The term sedation encompasses a progressive continuum of stages ranging from minimal sedation ("anxiolysis") through moderate sedation/analgesia ("conscious sedation"), deep sedation, and ultimately general anesthesia. Each stage represents a progressive degree of central nervous system (CNS) depression with impaired levels of cognition and consciousness, decreased responsiveness to stimuli, loss of protective reflexes, and diminished respiratory effort and cardiovascular performance. The therapeutic goal of sedation is to provide calm, comfort, pain relief, and cooperation of a patient undergoing a procedure that often evokes anxiety, discomfort, and pain, but which may require full patient cooperation.Sedation techniques are employed to facilitate diagnostic or therapeutic procedures requiring varying degrees of anxiolysis and/or analgesia, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), endoscopy, setting a bone fracture, or an interventional