Children are undergoing diagnostic and therapeutic procedures outside of the operating room on an increasing basis. To accomplish the cooperation and immobilisation necessary for the successful completion of these procedures, a variety of methods, including conscious and profound sedation, and in some circumstances general anaesthesia, have been advocated.Safety and well being of the child is the utmost priority while undergoing sedation. Awareness of the choice of the sedative and the dosage required and the potential side effects and hazards of using sedative anesthesia needs to be updated regularly.This systematic review aims to evaluate the safety and effectieveness of commonly used sedative anesthetics for children.

The PICO, population, intervention, comparator and outcomes strategy used was as follows: population, children requiring dental surgical procedures; intervention, oral sedation; comparator, placebo group or other oral drug administered; and outcomes, effectiveness: anxiety, sedation and satisfaction with the treatment and safety: adverse effect, heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturation.

9 articles were selected out of a total of 1135 searched articles from various databases and all 9 were assessed for risk of bias.Findings of our systematic review implies that to produce a deeper level of sedation, the combination of nitrous oxide, oxygen, and a hypnotic drug is effective, allowing pediatric patients to tolerate with low untoward incidents reported.

KEYWORDS: propofol, sedative anesthesia, ketamine, pediatric dentistry