A sedative is a substance that induces sedation by reducing irritability or excitement.
At higher doses it may result in slurred speech, staggering gait, poor judgment, and slow, uncertain reflexes.
Doctors often administer sedatives to patients in order to
dull the patient's anxiety related to painful or anxiety-provoking
procedures.
Although sedatives do not relieve pain in themselves, they
can be a useful adjunct to analgesics in preparing patients for surgery,
and are commonly given to patients before they are anaesthetized, or
before other highly uncomfortable and invasive procedures like cardiac
catheterization , colonoscopy or MRI.
They increase tractability and compliance of children or
troublesome or demanding patients.
Patients in intensive care units are almost always sedated
(unless they are unconscious from their condition anyway).
Doses of sedatives such as benzodiazepines when used as a hypnotic to induce sleep tend to be higher than those used to relieve anxiety where as only low doses are needed to provide calming sedative effects.
Sedatives can be abused to produce an overly-calming effect (alcohol being the classic and most common sedating drug).
At high doses or when they are abused, many of these drugs can cause unconsciousness and even death.
There is some overlap between the terms sedative and hypnotic. Although the effects described by the two terms are different,
the medications that cause the effects described by one term often also
cause the effects described by the other term.
However, advances in pharmacology have permitted more
specific targeting of receptors, and greater selectivity of agents,
which necessitates greater precision when describing these agents and
their effects:
- Anxiolytic refer specifically to the effect upon anxiety.
(However, some benzodiazipines are sedatives, hypnotics, and
anxiolytics.)
- Tranquilizer can refer to anxiolytics or antipsychotics.
- Soporific and sleeping pill are near-synonyms for
hypnotics.
Sedation can sometimes leave the patient with long-term or
short-term amnesia.
Lorazepam is one such pharmacological agent that can cause
anterograde amnesia. Intensive care unit patients who receive higher
doses over longer periods of time, typically via IV drip, are more
likely to experience such side effects.
Further Reading
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article on
"Sedative"
All material adapted used from Wikipedia is available under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Wikipedia® itself is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.