Assessment of pain and quality of life in patients undergoing cardiac surgery: a cohort study

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to evaluate postoperative pain and quality of life in patients undergoing median sternotomy. METHODS: A cohort study was carried out on a sample of 30 patients who underwent elective cardiac surgery by longitudinal median sternotomy. Patients were interviewed at Intensive Care Unit discharge and hospital discharge, when the Visual Numeric Scale and the Brief Pain Inventory were applied, and 2 weeks after hospital discharge, when the World Health Organization Quality of Life-Bref questionnaire was administered. The normality of the results was analyzed by the Shapiro-Wilk test, and Wilcoxon Rank Sum and McNemar tests were utilized for the analysis of numerical and categorical variables. For correlation between numerical variables, Spearman's linear correlation test was applied. To compare numerical variables, Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were applied. Differences between groups were considered significant when the p-value was <0.05. RESULTS: Between Intensive Care Unit and hospital discharge, there was a reduction in median pain intensity assessed by the Visual Numeric Scale from 5.0 to 2.0 (p<0.001), as well as in eight Brief Pain Inventory parameters: worst pain intensity in the last 24 h (p=0.001), analgesic relief (p=0.035), and pain felt right now (p=0.009); and in interference in daily activities (p<0.001), mood (p=0.017), ability to walk (p<0.001), relationship with other people (p=0.005), and sleep (p=0.006). Higher pain intensity at Intensive Care Unit discharge was associated with worse performance in the psychological domain of quality of life at out-of-hospital follow-up. CONCLUSION: Proper management of post-sternotomy pain in the Intensive Care Unit may imply better quality of life at out-of-hospital follow-up.