The relationship between preoperative anxiety and acute pain and nausea-vomiting in children after surgery.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to evaluate the relationship between preoperative anxiety and acute pain and nausea-vomiting in children. METHOD: In this study, FLACC Pain Scale, modified Yale Preoperative Anxiety Scale and BARF Nausea Scale Score were used. The statistical analysis of our study was performed using SPSS version 25.0 program. Shapiro-Wilk test was used to evaluate the normal distribution of variables. Descriptive analysis used mean and standard deviation values for presentation purposes. RESULTS: A total of 77 patients were included in the study. The mean age of the patients was 9.84 ± 2.52 years and 74.03% were male. 24.68% of the children were attending second grade. 37.66% of the children had undergone surgery before and 46.75% had been hospitalized before. The mean hospitalization time was 3.37 ± 3.58. It was found that there was a relationship between the FLACC Pain Scale, Yale Preoperative Anxiety Scale and Barf Nausea Scales, and as a result of the regression analysis, anxiety had a mediating role in the occurrence of pain and nausea. CONCLUSION: These results showed that preoperative anxiety is associated in the prevention and treatment of postoperative pain and nausea-vomiting in children.