Schmidt 2007.

Methods	Randomized open‐label trial
Participants	ASA I‐II children, 7‐12 years old, undergoing general or combined general/regional anaesthesia for various surgeries. Sixty (60) children enrolled (clonidine 18; dexmedetomidine 20; midazolam 22) Exclusions: chronic pain, cerebral palsy, autism, difficulty understanding verbal commands, preoperative use of analgesics or anticonvulsants, pre‐anaesthesia medications prior to evaluation
Interventions	Experimental group (1): clonidine 4 μg/kg orally, 90 min before surgery Experimental group (2): dexmedetomidine 1 μg/kg transmucosally, 45 min before surgery Comparison group: midazolam 0.5 mg/kg orally, 30 min before surgery
Outcomes	Pain by verbal pain scale (reported as categorical data: numbers with none, mild, moderate or severe pain) Pain by visual analogue scale (categorically as none‐mild and moderate‐severe, and as continuous data for average score) Sedation Anxiety Time to discharge from PACU Recovery time Mean arterial pressure and heart rate
Notes	Children received regional blocks pre‐incision according to routine: individual numbers not specified but overall rates of blockade for each treatment group given as a percentage The data from the dexmedetomidine group have not been included in this review
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Low risk	Computer‐generated random list
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Low risk	Described as concealed by communication with principal author
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	High risk	Open‐label study
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	All participants' data analysed
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Unclear risk	Analgesic use was reportedly recorded, but this does not appear in Results section
Other bias	Unclear risk	None evident; patient demographics, type of surgery, and use of regional anaesthesia evenly distributed between groups