Personalized Care Can Ease Preoperative Anesthesia Anxiety

TOPLINE:

Personalized interventions, including empathic conversations and educational videos, significantly reduce preoperative anxiety in patients undergoing elective surgery.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers conducted a prospective, randomized controlled trial from March 2021 to January 2023 at Marburg University Hospital in Marburg, Germany, focusing on reducing preoperative anxiety.
• A total of 122 adults (mean age, 57.4 years; 63.9% women) awaiting elective surgery under general anesthesia were included, with procedures planned for the day following enrollment.
• Participants were randomly assigned to two groups: an intervention arm who received a personalized and information-based intervention to address preoperative anxiety, comprising either a video, a conversation, or both, tailored to their preferences; and a control arm who received standard preanesthetic consultation.
• Anxiety levels were measured using the Amsterdam Preoperative Anxiety and Information Scale, a six-item questionnaire, at multiple time points before and after the intervention.
• The primary outcome was the reduction in preoperative anxiety associated with anesthesia; secondary outcomes included surgery-related anxiety, patient satisfaction with medical care and the intervention, and the need for anxiolytic premedication.

TAKEAWAY:

• In the intervention group, 83.1% of participants reported reduced anesthesia-related anxiety at the first assessment after randomization, whereas 15.3% reported no change in anxiety. In contrast, 70.7% of the participants in the control group reported no change in anxiety.
• Compared with the control group, the intervention group experienced reduced anxiety related to both anesthesia and surgery (both P
• The personalized intervention led to a minimal clinically important difference of 1.03 points for anesthesia-related anxiety and 1.13 points for surgery-related anxiety on the scale.
• The intervention was perceived as helpful by 98.2% of participants, with a mean support rating of 7.9 on a numeric rating scale. Patients in the intervention group reported a reduced need for anxiolytic premedication before surgery (P = .024).

IN PRACTICE:

“These findings suggest that using both a video and a conversation could streamline information delivery and make the process more time efficient,” the authors of the study wrote. “This study’s intervention represents an effective and safe alternative to pharmacological anxiolysis with benzodiazepines,” they added.

SOURCE:

The study was led by Stefan Salzmann, PhD, of the Philipps-University Marburg, in Germany. It was published online on December 26, 2024, in Anesthesiology.

LIMITATIONS:

The lack of an active control group may have affected the ability to isolate the specific effects of the intervention. The use of a binary question to assess anxiety could have limited the sensitivity of the inclusion criteria. The findings were specific to patients seeking information-based support, potentially affecting their generalizability. 

DISCLOSURES:

Salzmann disclosed receiving research funding from the German Research Foundation and the German Heart Foundation. No other relevant conflicts of interest were reported.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.