Sedation for endoscopic procedures aims to provide high quality sedation, lower risks, short recovery time, superior recovery quality and absence of side effects, seeking high patient level of satisfaction.

The goal of the study was to assess administration of remifentanil combined with propofol regarding the effects of the drug association during sedation and recovery for patients submitted to upper gastrointestinal diagnostic endoscopy.

One hundred and five patients were assessed, randomly divided into three groups of 35 patients.

The Control Group was sedated with propofol alone. Study Group 1 was sedated with a fixed dose of 0.2 μg.kg−1 remifentanil combined with propofol.

Study Group 2 was sedated with 0.3 μg.kg−1 remifentanil combined with propofol.

We assessed the quality of sedation, hemodynamic parameters, incidence of significant hypoxemia, time for spontaneous eye opening, post-anesthetic recovery time, quality of post-anesthetic recovery, presence of side effects and patient satisfaction.