The Psychological Control of Preoperative Anxiety

Forty healthy volunteer hospital patients who had been admitted For therapeutic abortions were given anxiety scale questionnaires during the afternoon of the day before operation. That evening. the anesthesiologist conducted either a “cursory” (brief and minimally informative) or “supportive” (long and relatively) informative with maximal rapport) preoperative interview. The following morning the Skin Conductance Anxiety Test (SCAT), a physiological measure of anxiety level, was carried out as part of the induction procedure on the non‐premedicated patients. The random order determining the type of interview was known only to the anesthesiologist and no scoring was carried out until after the conclusion of all testing. The investigation showed that highly anxious patients had their anxiety level significantly reduced by both cursory and supportive interviews, while the relatively non‐anxious patients had their anxiety levels significantly increased by cursory interviews. It was again demonstrated that the level of anxiety is a determinant of the amount of thiopental sodium required for induction.