[Preoperative anxiety--anxiety about the operation, anxiety about anesthesia, anxiety about pain?]

Questioning for the content of presurgical anxiety a situative examination of different contents of anxiety was performed combined with a correlational analysis of problem relevant personality traits (Freiburger Personality Inventory, FPI; Eigenschaftswörterliste, EWL). Preoperatively the anxiety in young patients is higher than it is in old ones, women anticipating thoracotomy name the highest anxiety scores. Generally the anxiety before important surgery is higher than before operations, which are calculated as being not so impressive; women show higher anxiety than men. Postoperatively anxiety does not decrease, but remains nearly unchanged, but very high scoring anxiety preoperatively turns back to low scoring postoperatively. From the contents of anxiety that of mutilations by surgery ranges firstly in major surgery, followed by anxiety of unreversible lost of consciousness by anesthesia, in "minor surgery" this ratio is turned back, here anxiety of complicated anesthesia ranges firstly. With growing age anxiety of mutilation by surgery becomes apparent. The informations about anxiety are related to content of anxiety, rarely to other variables, which were examined together with. The information is correlated to the personality traits, esp. to extraversion-introversion and emotional lability/stability, both are similarly correlated with pain, but not to postoperative complications. The idea that preoperative anxiety may reactively induce postoperative complications cannot be supported by the results.