Anxiety in preoperative anesthetic procedures.

Background: Preoperative anxiety is a common and poorly evaluated condition in patients who will undergo an anesthetic and surgical intervention. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of anxiety in a group of patients undergoing elective surgery, as assessed by the Amsterdam Anxiety Preoperative and Information (AAPI) scale.

Methods: We studied 135 patients scheduled for elective surgery applying the AAPI scale 24 h before the surgical procedure to evaluate the presence of anxiety and patient characteristics. A descriptive analysis with mean +/- standard deviation for categorical variables was done. For intragroup differences, chi(2) test was used. Pearson correlation for the association between anxiety and postoperative complications was carried out. A value of p =0.05 was considered significant.

Results: One hundred six patients were surgically treated, 88% were female (average age 44 +/- 12 years). Some degree of preoperative anxiety was present in 72 patients (76%; p = 0.001) with a grade point average on the AAPI scale equal to 17 +/- 7 points, of which 95 (70%, OR = 5.08; p = 0.002) were females.

Conclusions: Results of this study suggest the presence of high levels of preoperative anxiety in patients scheduled for elective surgery. The origin of the anxiety appears to be related to many factors that can be evaluated in pre-anesthetic consultation. Further study is needed to prevent the presence of this disorder.