The effect of preoperative pain fear on postoperative pain, analgesic use, and comfort level

Abstract

Background: Preoperative assessment of pain fear could provide essential information for improving pe- rioperative care and could be the first step toward targeted pain management. Aims: The aim of this study is to determine the effect of preoperative pain fear on postoperative pain, analgesic use, and comfort level. Method: This cross-sectional study was conducted with 201 patients in the general surgery service be- tween January 2022 and March 2022. A sociodemographic questionnaire, Visual Analog Scale (VAS), pain fear, and general comfort scales were used for data collection. Correlation analysis was performed to ex- amine the relationship between scales, and p < .05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The mean age of the individuals participating in the study was 51.22 ±15.89 and 69.2% of them were women. The average score of pain fear was 63.77 ±21.47, and the average score of the VAS was 7.63 ±1.82 after the surgery before analgesics and 5.06 ±1.58 six hours after surgery. The mean comfort level was 132.88 ±9.26. A significant and positive correlation was detected between the total pain fear and the VAS score, analgesic use, and comfort level ( p < .05). Conclusions: In this research, findings demonstrated that as the patients’ pain fear increased, postoper- ative pain severity and amount of analgesia increased. Providing pain management with analgesics in- creases comfort in patients, but it may cause secondary problems in patients who use high-dose anal- gesics. Therefore, reducing pain fear, which is one of the main factors in pain, is essential in pain man- agement.