Stress arousal and coping with surgery

There is little evidence of a curvilinear relationship between pre-operative emotionality and post-operative adjustment, as predicted by a model which supposes that moderate preoperative anxiety assists adjustment. This paper suggests that the negative affect, or stress, associated with the work of worry should be distinguished from the active coping orientation which it also implies. In this study stress and arousal were assessed pre-operatively in a sample of cholecystectomy patients, and correlations between these scores and various indices of post-operative adjustment were computed. Stress before surgery was positively related to stress and pain experienced post-operatively. Arousal, by contrast, was negatively related to pain, medications and period before discharge. Female patients had higher stress scores than the males, while the direction of the difference was reversed in te case of arousal. These findings are interpreted as support for the significance of the role of coping orientation, as represented by arousal, in promoting adjustment, with emotionality or stress playing a less significant and even negative role.