A randomized controlled trial to study the effect of a pediatric anesthesia comic information leaflet on preoperative anxiety in children
Abstract
Background & Objective: Preoperative anxiety among children may at times be very cumbersome for the anesthesiologist, as an anxious child cannot be expected to be very cooperative. Anxiety may interfere into vascular excess and smooth induction of anesthesia. This study was conducted to assess the efficacy of ‘pediatric anesthesia comic information’ leaflet in reducing preoperative anxiety and to obtain parents feedback on its utility.
Methodology: It was a prospective single blinded randomized controlled trial among 150 children, aged 6-12 y, undergoing elective surgery in a tertiary-care hospital. Test group (Group T) was given a comic leaflet along with oral information while control group (Group C) received only oral information. Preoperative anxiety was measured using Modified Yale Preoperative Anxiety Scale (m-YPAS) at three time intervals along with feedback from parents on the comic’s utility. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 21.0 with Chi-square, independent t and Mann Whitney tests applied to interpret the results.
Results: Pre-operative anxiety on the day prior to surgery (T1) was 25.75 ± 5.52 and 26.61 ± 7.77 compared to baseline (T0) score of 25.8 ± 6.1 and 26.6 ± 8.0 in group T and C respectively. The mean scores in the holding area (T2) was 38.87 ± 14.20 and 41.35 ± 16.40 in Group T and C respectively. The p value of change in the preoperative anxiety scores T0-T1 was 0.2, and T0-T2 was 0.24 with no significant decrease in preoperative anxiety in intervention compared to the control group (p > 0.05).
Conclusion: Our results show that comic leaflet, given pre-operatively in addition to standard oral information had no additional effect on reducing anxiety in children undergoing surgery. However, the parents of the study subjects found the comic leaflet to be informative and it needs to be explored further in future research.
Key words: Anesthesia; Preoperative anxiety; Pediatrics; Surgery; Comic leaflet
Citation: Kulkarni MM, Pradeep S, Rao M, Kulkarni MM. A randomized controlled trial to study the effect of a pediatric anesthesia comic information leaflet on preoperative anxiety in children. Anaesth. pain intensive care 2021;26(1):75-80.
Received: June 27, 2021, Reviewed: September 28, 2021, Accepted: November 17, 2021
