Reply to the Letter to the Editor: A comparative analysis of 3 sedation guidelines for patients undergoing subarachnoid anaesthesia. Randomized, single blind clinical trial

In reference to the letter sent to the Editor by Laura Girón-Arango and Luis Enrique Chaparro¹ and the article cited in the heading above,² I am pleased to see that sedation by anaesthetists is a topic of discussion and interest by the scientific community. As specialists, it is important for us to continue to refine sedation techniques in order to offer the best options to our patients depending on the setting of our practice.³ For this reason, the Sedation Committee of Colombian Society of Anesthesiology and Resuscitation (S.C.A.R.E.), of which I am a member, is working on guidelines and protocols on competencies for sedation.

In our research, the operating room anaesthetist prepared, administered and controlled sedation and its effects, but the licensed practical nurses, after receiving training on sedation and learning about the research, were the ones in charge of assessing and entering outcomes in the forms used for recording the study variables, in order to reduce the risk of overestimating the effect of the intervention. Moreover, we sought to determine the efficacy of different sedation guidelines in order to identify the advantages and/or disadvantages of the use of combinations over the use of a single agent, and not precisely equivalences. We do not share the view of depriving a group of patients of the clear benefit of sedation in this type of research, although it is worth considering the option of music therapy using the preferred genre selected by the patient him/herself for sedation purposes.^4–6 This is an area of research at the present time.

Funding

The author did not receive sponsorship to undertake this article.

Conflicts of interest

The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.