Does Showing Video Information About Spinal Anesthesia Relieves Patient Anxiety?

Anxiety is common in perioperative patients with incidence of 60-89 %. Lack of knowledge about surgery and anesthesia, anesthesia procedures and unfamiliar surroundings are the common causes of anxiety . Anxiety related to anesthesia can be due to lack of knowledge about its process, procedures and risk associated with it or misconceptions about it. Long NPO status and unexpected delay before and during anesthesia procedure and surgery further increases the anxiety in perioperative patients. Anxiety increases the activity of sympathetic nervous system and cause preoperative and intraoperative tachycardia, hypertension, arrhythmias, increased pain perception and increase requirement of anaesthetic drugs. This may lead to harmful effect on patient health and decrease overall patient satisfaction and even traumatic experience for rest of life. This may affect process of giving informed consent for the planned surgery. Many measures are taken to allay anxiety in perioperative patients. Anxiolytic medications are given preoperative period to allay anxiety but they may have detrimental effect on patient health, requires administration under supervision of health professional and may not be effective unless the cause of anxiety is taken care. Counselling regarding the procedure of anesthesia during pre-anesthetic check up is other way to allay anxiety but transfer of knowledge is usually limited and may not be entirely retained. Other method in the form of written pamphlets, booklet or questionnaires have been tried but most of the patients in Nepal are not literate enough to read and understand it. Multimedia information to allay patient's anxiety has been successfully tried. Previous study shows a significant reduction in anxiety level due to preoperative multimedia information among the patients undergoing surgery. Investigators have developed a short visual clip of 4.5 minutes duration depicting the procedure of spinal anaesthesia .Investigators will be using Hamilton Anxiety Score in patients undergoing surgical procedures under spinal anesthesia .