Relaxation with heat and procedural information to diminish anxiety in presurgical patients of hernia surgery.

ABSTRACT

Presurgical anxiety has been associated with postsurgical pain and complications, therefore we decided to compare two psychological interventions in order to reduce presurgical anxiety-state and pain in patients undergoing hernia surgery. Patients undergoing the presurgical consultation for hernia repair (umbilical or inguinal), were invited. The group of procedural information consisted in administering an informative brochure after the presurgical consultation, while the relaxation with heat group (RWH) consisted in giving a heat pack to the patients while asking them to think in the benefits of the surgery and instructions of relaxation were given, this was performed at the operating theater before surgery. Anxiety-state and pain levels were measured after presurgical consultation and a day after just before surgery. Ninety-five patients were included in 3 groups of study (control = 36, procedural information = 31 and RWH = 28); when we included only those individuals with moderate or high anxiety at the presurgical consultation, we found that procedural information (-4.72 ± 6.10) and RWH diminished anxiety (-9.29 ± 6.91) but only RWH group reached statistical significance when compared with control group (-9.29 ± 6.91 vs -0.56 ± 9.82, p = 0.007). In conclusion, RWH produced a significantly higher reduction of anxiety-state before hernia surgery.