I'll start with a simple premise—the current IV anesthetic agents available for sedation and anesthesia in dentistry are quite good, even excellent. In fact, they are the best yet and only continue to improve as the march toward anesthesia nirvana, an instantaneous pharmacologic on/off switch, persists. The advent of remifentanil with its plasma esterase–based metabolism has blown the door open for a whole new generation of ultra–short-acting agents. Remimazolam, a similarly metabolized benzodiazepine, is the newest arrival. These drugs have extremely short clinical durations of action and context-sensitive half-times (≤8 minutes) attributed to lightning-fast terminal half-lives and lack of active