Key result
Four questionnaires (ASSQ, SFQ, SAQ, and ASPA) provide comprehensive methods for assessing preoperative anxiety and specific patient concerns to facilitate individualized prehabilitation.
Why the study?
Routine evaluation of preoperative anxiety and patient-specific concerns is universally advocated as part of prehabilitation, motivating an extension of available assessment tools beyond previously described scales.
This review highlights four preoperative anxiety assessment scales (SFQ, ASSQ, SAQ, ASPA) to facilitate individualized patient evaluation and improve prehabilitation before surgery.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
May inform preoperative anxiety screening in cardiac surgery; leaves open larger prospective validation of Polish SFQ.
The current literature indicates that routine evaluation of preoperative anxiety, its determinants, and patient-specific concerns is universally advocated. This aligns with the increasingly acknowledged importance of prehabilitation - a comprehensive process preparing patients for surgery. A crucial component of prehabilitation is assessing patients' mental health. Recommendations for psychological evaluations in prehabilitation encompass, inter alia, determining the severity of anxiety. This work builds on a 2019 article, which presented scales for preoperative anxiety assessment: the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), the Amsterdam Preoperative Anxiety and Information Scale (APAIS), and the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). This article extends the possibilities of preoperative anxiety assessment by introducing four additional methods: the Surgical Fear Questionnaire (SFQ), the Anxiety Specific to Surgery Questionnaire (ASSQ), the Surgical Anxiety Questionnaire (SAQ), and Anesthesia- and Surgery-dependent Preoperative Anxiety (ASPA). The authors provide comprehensive details on these instruments, including scoring, interpretation, availability, and usefulness both in scientific research and clinical practice. The authors also provide the data on the availability of Polish versions of the presented methods and preliminary data on the reliability of SFQ in patients awaiting cardiac surgery. This review seems relevant for professionals in multiple disciplines, including anesthesiology, surgery, clinical psychology, nursing, primary care and notably prehabilitation. It emphasizes the necessity of individualizing anxiety assessment and acknowledging patient subjectivity, which the presented methods facilitate through a thorough evaluation of specific patient concerns. The literature review also identifies concerns and future research avenues in this area. The importance of qualitative studies and those evaluating prehabilitation intervention is emphasized.
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Nowicka‐Sauer et al. (2024) conducted a review in Preoperative anxiety. Preoperative anxiety assessment scales (ASSQ, SFQ, SAQ, ASPA) was evaluated. Four questionnaires (ASSQ, SFQ, SAQ, and ASPA) provide comprehensive methods for assessing preoperative anxiety and specific patient concerns to facilitate individualized prehabilitation.
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