Background As a new clinical technique widely used to analyse electroencephalogram, bispectral index (BIS) can monitor the functional state and changes of the cerebral cortex in a more effective way. BIS illustrates the varying states of consciousness during maintenance of anesthesia by using numeric values ranging from 0 to 100, and has been confirmed effective in adult patients clinically. However, further studies needed to verify if BIS is applicable to monitor the depth of anesthesia in children, and the deficiency of BIS remains unclear. Objective To review recent progress in clinical application of BIS monitoring on children. Content This article mainly introduced the latest progress of BIS applied to monitoring the depth of anesthesia in children, as well as made a systematic review on the possibilities and limitations of the application of BIS in children. It could supply future reference for the development of clinical equipments for monitoring the depth of anesthesia. Trend BIS is instructive to monitor the depth of hypnosis, avoid intraoperative awareness and predict the loss and recovery of consciousness in pediatric patients. But the effectiveness still needs to be confirmed by large-scale clinical trials.