The impacts of preoperative anxiety on the postoperative pain in surgical patients

The Impacts of Preoperative Anxiety on the Postoperative Pain in Surgical Patients Afyon Kocatepe University, Institute of Medical Silences, Department of Surgical Diseases Nursing, Afyonkarahisar. Introduction: Anxiety is a reaction against a thread which is unknown spontaneous, indefinite or source of which depends on internal conflict. Anxiety is an important part of the reaction against the stress and prepares the person to take action in case of danger. All surgical operations causes fear of death on the patient. Afterwards this fear leaves its place to anxiety and fear of postoperative pain. Increasing anxiety and fear causes increasing of the severity of the pain. The postoperative pain is an acute pain which starts with the surgical trauma, ever-decreasing and ends with the tissue healing. Aim: The research is made as definitive for the aim of determining whether or not there is a relationship between postoperative pain and preoperative and postoperative state and trait anxiety levels. Tools-Method: The research environment is constituted by the patients who received treatment at Van/Çaldıran State Hospital between January-March 2015. The required permits are obtained both from the patients and the institutions for application of the surveys. The 130 patients were reached among these and sample surveys were taken from them. State- Trait Anxiety Inventory which was developed by Spilberg and et al. were used in order to determine the state and continuous anxiety levels of the patients. The statistical analysis of the results of the survey applied by the Researcher was made with SPSS 20.0 package software. Kendall Tau-b correlation coefficient was used in the tables, one-sample Kolmogrov Smirnov Z test was issued as normal distribution test, Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test and one-sample t-test was used as average test. Findings: Of the 130 patients participated to the research 58.5% is women and 41.5% men. While the average age is 35.63∓12.06 median age is 34.28.5 % is housewife and 14.6 % are unemployed. The ratio of self-employed persons is 18.5%. 30% of them are primary school graduate and 73% of them are married. 87.7 % of them reside in city centre. 80.8 % of them do not have social security. 36,9 % of the patients smoke cigarette and 32.3 % of them use alcohol occasionally and 67,7 % never use alcohol. The smokers stated they smoke average15,6∓5.32 cigarettes daily for 10.57∓7.84 years. None of them suffer from a chronic disease. 59,2 of the patients have a former hospital experience. While the complaints of 29.9 % continued 12 months and more, complaints of 35 % occurred shortly before 1 month. Attendant will stay together with 75 % of them. 83.5 % of the participants stated they didn't live any problem in postoperative mobilization. 59.1 % of them did not observe any change in their intestinal routines. 61.4 % of them do not have any problem related to place of operation. No secretion or redness has occurred on the sound site of 58 % of them. While 51.2 % of them stated they suffer from sleeplessness 39.4 of them said nutritional habits have changed. While no change has occurred in state of mind of 54.3 of them, 26 % of them said they have complaints like postoperative nausea, vomiting. Conclusion: It is researched whether or not there is a relationship between the postoperative pain and preoperative and postoperative anxiety levels in line with the aim of the research and it is found that there is a statistical meaningful relationship between each anxiety score and postoperative pain severity. Keywords: Surgical Treatment, anxiety, pain, postoperative pain.