The effect of preoperative patient-reported anxiety on morbidity and mortality outcomes in patients undergoing major general surgery

Excessive levels of anxiety may negatively influence treatment outcomes and likely increase patient suffering. We designed a prospective observational study to assess whether preoperative patient-reported anxiety affects major general surgery outcomes. We prospectively administered the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) to measure preoperative anxiety in patients awaiting major general surgical procedures. Patients were grouped by STAI scores according to established cutoffs: no anxiety (STAI < 40) and anxiety (STAI ≥ 40). Four hundred patients completed the questionnaires and underwent surgery, with an average interval from questionnaire completion to surgery of 4 days. Applying a state anxiety (STAI-S) score ≥ 40 as a reference point, the prevalence of patient-reported anxiety was 60.5% (241 of 400). The mean STAI-S score for these patients was 50.48 ± 7.77. The mean age of the entire cohort was 58.5 ± 14.12 years. The majority of participants were male (53.8%). The distribution of sex by anxiety status showed that 53.5% of women and 46.5% of men had anxiety (p = 0.003). In the entire cohort, postoperative complications occurred in 23.9% and 28.6% of the no anxiety and anxiety groups, respectively. The difference was nonsignificant. In a subgroup of patients who underwent high-risk complex procedures (N = 221), however, postoperative complications occurred in 31.4% and 45.2% of the no anxiety and anxiety groups, respectively. This difference was significant at p = 0.004. Of the patients who were anxious, 3.3% (8 of 241) died during hospitalization following surgery, compared with 4.4% of the patients (7 of 159) who were not anxious (p = 0.577). In the multivariable analysis adjusted for covariates and based on the results of subgroup analysis, preoperative anxiety assessed by the STAIS score was associated with morbidity (OR 2.12, CI 1.14–3.96; p = 0.018) but not mortality. The majority of enrolled patients in this study were classified as having high- to very high-level preoperative clinical anxiety, and we found a significant quantitative effect of patient-reported anxiety on morbidity but not mortality after surgery.