Intravenous (IV) Conscious Sedation involves administering a titrated dose of a single drug, usually Midazolam (an anti-anxiety drug), into the bloodstream.
Although this will make you drowsy it will not cause you to fall into a deep sleep, enabling you to understand and respond to requests from the clinical team. The drug used for Conscious Sedation causes either full or partial memory loss until the effects of the drug wear off. This gives the sense of time passing very quickly and means you are unlikely to recall many details of the procedure itself and some patients do not remember anything.
Conscious Sedation is our treatment of choice for nervous or phobic patients as it is fast acting and the level of sedation can be tailored to each individual patient’s needs. This sedation is popular with patients who like to remain conscious throughout treatment enabling them to co-operate with instructions and requests.