 Most critically ill patients receive sedative and analgesic drugs to attenuate discomfort and pain. The excessive use of sedatives and analgesics has undesirable effects for patients. Whereas undersedation is mostly easy to identify, oversedation with its associated problems is more difficult to recognize. Stopping sedation daily helps to avoid gross oversedation, but this is not always possible. Monitoring the depth of sedation is difficult and is currently based on clinical assessment and the use of clinical scoring systems. These scoring systems cannot be applied continuously, they are subjective and the level of consciousness can be altered when sedation is assessed. 