The effects of anxiety on pain and quality of life in patients undergoing prostate biopsy with transrectal ultrasonography

The purpose of this study to evaluate the effects of anxiety on pain and quality of life in patients undergoing prostate biopsy with transrectal ultrasonography. Thus, the necessity of any treatment to reduce anxiety will be determined before this method which frequently applied nowadays.MATERIALS- METHODS:HAD scale form and Short Form-36 were filled in 50 patients with prostate biopsy indication just before the procedure. Then a biopsy was performed. After that, the level of pain on biopsy was evaluated by VAS.RESULTS:There was no significant relationship between anxiety and pain scores of patients. Significant inverse correlation was found between anxiety and quality of life. There was no relationship between age and pain perception, anxiety and quality of life. There was no significant relationship between pain perception and prostate size, number of samples, abnormal rectal examination with finger finding.CONCLUSION:In this study, on prostate biopsy with transrectal ultrasonography, anxiety was not an effective factor on related-procedure pain perception. Therefore, we believe that there is no need prophylactic treatment for anxiety before biopsy. Significant inverse correlation was observed between anxiety of patients and quality of life. However, anxiety in patients is depending on invasive procedure or fear of cancer is not investigated. For this reason, we believe that a better evidence of this issue can be obtained with prospective studies which used to the larger volume and instantaneous evaluate of anxiety scales.