The Effect of Informing Parents or Caregivers of Patients on Their Anxiety from Anesthesia Risks during Their Child’s Surgery

Abstract

Background: Each patient who needs a surgical operation is going under general anesthesia with many risks. The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether the provision of detailed anesthetic risk information is associated with increased parental anxiety.
Methods: In this randomized clinical trial study 140 caregivers of patients admitted for surgery, was selected in order of their reference and they were asked to fulfill the test. In the next step, persons were distributed into two groups of the control group with an even number and the intervention group with odd number (according to the numbers on questionnaire). The routine information about the risks of anesthesia was given to the control group with an even number at the operation date in holding area, and they were asked to re-fulfill the questionnaire.
Results: The majority of parents (> 95%) preferred to have comprehensive information concerning their child’s perioperative period, including information about all possible complications. For selected items, increased parental educational level was associated with increased desire for information (P < 0.050). For Phase 2, when the intervention group was compared with the control group, there were no significant differences in parental anxiety over the 4 time points [F(1,45) = 0.6, P = 0.410]. Furthermore, the interaction between time and group assignment was not significant [F(3,135) = 1.66, P = 0.181].
Conclusions: We conclude that parents of children undergoing surgery desire comprehensive perioperative information. Moreover, when provided with highly detailed anesthetic risk information, the parental anxiety level did not increase.