Assessment of Preoperative Anxiety And The Risk Factors In Patients Booked For Major Elective General Surgical Procedures With Amsterdam Preoperative Anxiety Scale

Madiha Abbas, Shoaib Malik

Abstract

Objective

To determine the frequency of preoperative anxiety and its risk factors in patients scheduled for elective surgery by using Amsterdam Preoperative Anxiety Scale (APAIS).

Study design

Analytical cross sectional study.

Place & Duration of study

Department of Anesthesiology, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), from January 2022 to June 2022.

Methodology

Patients booked for elective surgical operation, of ASA class 1-3, were included. Patients taking any anxiolytics drugs were excluded. APAIS was used to assess the anxiety level. Pearson's correlation, Cronbach alpha and Kruskal Wallis test were applied to the data set. A p-value of =0.05 was taken as statistically significant.

Results

A total of 120 patients, 72 (60%) females and 48 (40%) males, were included. Mean age of the patients was 46.40±1.27 years. The sum of anesthesia related anxiety (sum A) was 3.15+1.36 and surgery related anxiety (sum S) was 3.23+1.30. The sum of desire to get information (ID) was 3.30+1.24. Overall Cronbach alpha was 0.94. Anxiety was more frequent among female patients (p=0.00). However, anxiety was less in patients who had a previous history of surgery (p=<0.01).

Conclusions

Preoperative anxiety had a significant relationship with the female gender. Patients were desirous to receive more information about the anesthetist, the mode of anesthesia and whether they would experience pain during surgery and in postoperative period.

Key words

Anxiety, Elective surgery, Preoperative anxiety, Amsterdam Preoperative Anxiety Scale, APAIS.