Postoperative pain. Expectation and experience after coronary artery bypass grafting

A study of 43 patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting was conducted in order to compare pre-operative expectation of pain severity and duration to actual postoperative experience. As judged by linear visual analogue scores, patients expected more pain than they experienced (p = 0.0359). For the majority of patients, pain duration was less than expected. Eighty-four per cent of patients reported that their pain was better or the same as expected. Ninety-five per cent of patients were satisfied or very satisfied with postoperative analgesia. The authors conclude that, although the standard of postoperative analgesia after coronary artery bypass grafting remains objectively poor (the median postoperative pain score was 4 on a 10 cm linear visual analogue pain score), patients are usually satisfied with their pain relief. The authors suggest that this may be related to patients' pre-operative overestimation of postoperative pain severity. The authors caution against giving patients unrealistic expectations of the quality of postoperative analgesia.