[Preoperative anxiolysis with lormetazepam. A model for measuring anxiety]

Lormetazepam significantly reduced anxiety during local anaesthesia when compared with a placebo control group. There were significantly fewer accompanying symptoms of spinal anaesthesia under lormetazepam than under placebo. This number fell in relation to the decrease in the patients' anxiety. Lormetazepam also proved to be significantly superior to placebo according to the physician's assessment of anxiety. There were no differences between the two groups with respect to side-effects. The results of the Erlanger Anxiety Scale--Situative (EAS-S) revealed: 1. Oral treatment with lormetazepam led to markedly lower anxiety values than treatment with placebo (p less than 0.1; t test, one-sided). - 2. Following additional, intravenous administration of lormetazepam an even greater difference between the two treatment groups became evident. - 3. The situative anxiety was lower under treatment with lormetazepam than with placebo, independent of the variables "sex", "trait anxiety" or "anxiety control mechanism" (dimension of sensitization-repression). - 4. Women attained higher actual anxiety values than did men. - 5. Patients with high basic anxiety expectedly attained higher situative anxiety scores than those with lower basic anxiety.