Background: Preoperative anxiety among children is a challenge faced by anaesthesiologists. This study was conducted among children to assess the effect of paediatric anaesthesia comic information leaflet on preoperative anxiety and to obtain parents feedback on its utility.
Methods: This was a randomised controlled trial among 150 children aged six to twelve years undergoing elective surgeries in a tertiary-care hospital in South India. Test group was given a comic leaflet along with oral information while control group received only verbal information. Preoperative anxiety was measured using Modified Yale preoperative anxiety scale at three time intervals along with feedback from parents on the comics utility. Data was analysed using SPSS version 21.0 with Chi-square, independent t and Mann Whitney tests applied to interpret the results.
Results: Pre-operative anxiety on the day prior to surgery (T1) was 25.75 ± 5.52 & 26.61 ± 7.77 compared to baseline (T0) score of 25.8 ± 6.1 and 26.6 ± 8.0 in group T and C respectively. The mean scores in the holding area (T2) was 38.87 ± 14.20 and 41.35 ± 16.40 in Group T and C group respectively. The p value of change in the preoperative anxiety scores T0-T1 was 0.2 & T0-T2 was 0.24 with no significant decrease in preoperative anxiety in intervention compared to the control group (p>0.05).
Conclusion: Our results show that comic leaflet, given pre-operatively had no apparent effect on reducing anxiety in children undergoing surgery. However, the parents of the study subjects found the comic leaflet to be useful.
Key words: Anaesthesia, Preoperative anxiety, Paediatrics, Surgery, Comic leaflet.
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