| In China, sedation and anesthesia for gastrointestinal endoscopy have been addressed in the 2014 expert consensus, the 2020 expert consensus, and the 2026 management guideline. Together, these three documents reflect the standardization of gastrointestinal endoscopy sedation and anesthesia in China, progressing from safe implementation, to process refinement, and further to quality management. The 2014 and 2020 consensus documents had already provided recommendations on indications, contraindications, personnel allocation, facility and equipment requirements, complication prevention, and recovery room/discharge criteria. The 2026 guideline, developed within the framework of clinical practice guideline methodology, formulated 41 recommendations around 24 clinical questions, thereby presenting more systematically the requirements for preoperative assessment, risk stratification and triage, anesthetic decision-making, complication prevention, post-anesthesia recovery and discharge, and documentation traceability. By structurally comparing the key contents of these three documents and drawing on relevant domestic and international guidelines and literature on non-operating room anesthesia,this article discusses the professional positioning of anesthesiology in the era of comfort-oriented care. This article argues that anesthesiologists are not only core members of comfort-oriented care, but also important safeguards for patient safety and quality management in non-operating room procedures. Future development of endoscopic anesthesia should move from single-discipline training to multidisciplinary joint training, from anesthesia administration alone to whole-process governance, and from experience-based practice to data-driven continuous improvement. |
