The Proportion of Preoperative Patients Who Had an Anxiety: A Study in a University Hospital in Thailand

Abstract

Background and objective : Preoperative anxiety has affected many surgical outcomes and the previous study revealed 16% of preoperative patients having an anxiety. Since no report was found in any university hospitals in Thailand.  This study aimed : 1) To estimate the proportion of preoperative anxious inpatients. 2) to study the preoperative inpatients’ reasons of anxiety  and 3) to study level of information required.

Method : This was a descriptive study in a university hospital in Northeast of Thailand. The study population comprised of 91 preoperative inpatients that had to undergo to the operation on 27^th – 29^th  October 2014. SPSS-PC v 17 and Epi info were used to analyze and report the following descriptive statistics: frequency, percent and 95% CI, and anxiety will be reported when APAIS-anxiety score ≥ 11.

Results: The response rate was 96.7% (88/91). The proportion of preoperative anxiety patients were 34.5%, (95%CI: 24.8, 45.5). The proportion of preoperative inpatients undergone to the major surgery had the higher proportion as compared to those having the minor surgery (43.2% vs 24.4%). The patients thought that the top three reasons causing any preoperative anxiety were their post-operative complications (55.2%), risk of operation (49.4%) and post-operative pain (47.7%), respectively. Interestingly, one-third of informed consent patients acquired more information regarding operations at high strength.

Conclusion: One-third of the preoperative inpatients of a university hospital had the preoperative anxiety. The highest proportion of the reason concerning the cause of pre-operative anxiety was post-operative complications.