ICAPS

The moral and social imperative to diminish pain, alleviate anxiety, and optimize patient comfort during medical, dental, and surgical procedures has led to the worldwide practice of procedural sedation and analgesia. Practitioners of different backgrounds, training, and skill sets administer such sedation in diverse settings, and accordingly this multidisciplinary field has long been subject to interspecialty debate and discord.

The mission of the International Committee for the Advancement of Procedural Sedation (ICAPS) is to provide an independent, international, multidisciplinary forum to facilitate open dialogue and consensus generation between experts in the area of sedation, and to promote optimal, evidence-based, safe and effective practices for worldwide procedural sedation and analgesia in patients of all ages.

Photos courtesy of Larry B. Mellick, MD, Professor Marie T. Hosey, Adobe Stock and Baruch S. Krauss, MD (left to right), respectively. Used with permission.

• Provide a multidisciplinary, international, and independent consensus forum for all aspects of worldwide procedural sedation, anxiolysis and analgesia.
• Serve as an expert body able to consult, advise, and collaborate with the field’s various practitioners, specialty societies, and other organizations.
• Advocate and promote the most current evidence-based practices and training curricula for procedural sedation, anxiolysis, and analgesia.
• Promote the awareness that procedural sedation and analgesia is a multidisciplinary field, best represented by collaborative, multidisciplinary leadership.
• Foster scientific research in all areas of procedural sedation, anxiolysis, and analgesia.
• Provide and foster a mechanism for collecting, reviewing and sharing international scientific and clinical data.
• Produce statements on specific issues related to procedural sedation, anxiolysis, and analgesia that reflect a multidisciplinary, international consensus.