Objective To investigate the sedative effect of remimazolam besilate in elderly patients undergoing lumbar decompres-sion surgery and its impact on postoperative cognitive function.Methods 90 elderly patients undergoing lumbar decompression surgery were randomly divided into research group and control group with 45 cases in each group.The research group was administered remima-zolam besilate at 0.4 mg·kg-1 for induction and 1.0 mg·(kg·h)-1 for maintenance of anesthesia;the control group was given propofol at 2.0 mg·kg-1 and 4.0 mg·(kg·h)-1,respectively.Both groups were given sufentanil at 0.2~0.5 μg·kg-1 during induction and remifentanil at 0.05~0.10 μg·(kg·min)-1 during maintenance.Hemodynamic parameters including heart rate(HR)and mean arterial pressure(MAP)were compared between the two groups at time points of pre-induction(T0),loss of con-sciousness(T1),1 min after intubation(T2),skin incision(T3)and extubation(T4).Anesthetic recovery indicators including time to spontaneous respiration recovery and eye opening were recorded.Montreal Cognitive Assessment(MoCA)scores were compared be-fore surgery and 1 day and 3 days after surgery.Adverse reactions were observed.Results Time to spontaneous respiration recovery and eye opening were shorter in the research group compared to the control group(P<0.05).MAP and HR at T1,T2 and T3 were higher in the research group than the control group,and vasoactive drug usage was lower in the research group(P<0.05).Postopera-tive day 1 and day 3 MoCA scores were higher in the research group than the control group(P<0.05).There was no significant differ-ence in the incidence of adverse reactions between the two groups(P>0.05).Conclusions Remimazolam besilate maintains stable hemodynamics,reduces vasoactive drug usage,improves recovery quality and has less impact on cognitive function in elderly patients undergoing lumbar decompression.