Perioperative Anxiety

Anxiety is a subjective unpleasant feeling of dread over something unlikely to happen, such as the feeling of imminent death. It is often accompanied by restlessness, fatigue, problems in concentration, and muscular tension. Perioperative anxiety is described as a vague, uneasy feeling, the source of which is often nonspecific and unknown to the individual [1] but known to cause abnormal hemodynamics as a consequence of sympathetic, parasympathetic and endocrine stimulation. Perioperative period is one of the stressful events in their lifetime. It often triggers emotional, cognitive and physiological responses. It occurs in a transient form or persists as chronic form. It has propensity to produce aggressive reactions of a patient resulting in difficult postoperative pain management and compromise quality of care [2]. The goal of perioperative care is to provide better environments and quality of life of a patient before, during and after operation.