Method and apparatus for monitoring the sedation level of a sedated patient

Method for monitoring the sedation level of a sedated patient during anaesthesia, the method comprising the steps of:

• providing, from a skin conductance measuring equipment, a skin conductance signal measured at an area of the patient's skin,
• calculating, by a processing unit in an apparatus for monitoring the sedation level of the sedated patient, a derivative signal of said conductance signal with respect to time,
• establishing, by the processing unit, said sedation level based on said derivative signal, including applying a discretization function mapping a range of derivative signal values to a certain level in a sedation level scale,
• wherein a derivative signal value in the range [−0.02 μS/s, −0.00 μS/s] corresponds to a sedation level in the sedation level scale indicating that the patient does not respond to spoken commands or responses only to loud spoken commands.