Assess the Anxiety of Patients Preoperatively and Postoperatively Undergoing Elective Surgery Using Anesthesia Information Sheet: A Prospective Randomized Clinical Study

Abstract

Anxiety is an emotional state characterized by feelings of nervousness, worry, apprehension, and tension due to high activity of the autonomic nervous system.[1,2] Earlier studies have reported the prevalence of pre-operative anxiety ranging from 10% to 80%.[3,4] Pre-operative anxiety has both psychological and physiological effects by activation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis.[5] It can lead to deleterious effects on the hemodynamic parameters during the perioperative period; affect the overall anaesthesia management and surgical outcome Pharmacological medications are used to reduce anxiety, but they may induce some adverse effects. In contrast to this, various non-pharmacological interventions like—reassurance, music therapy, breathing exercises, meditation, acupressure, pre-procedure education are used to allay pre-operative anxiety and they are inexpensive, easy to perform, do not require high level of technical skill or equipment and are without adverse effects.[7] Previous randomized controlled trials of pre-procedure education such as structured interview, multimedia, and question prompt tool were found to be more effective than conventional methods, but no study is available till date about the use of anaesthesia information sheet as a tool for pre-procedure counselling. No literature is available for the same in the Indian scenario.