RESEARCH ARTICLE
Assessment of Knowledge of General and Local Anesthesia among Patients Undergoing Elective Surgery
Sepideh Vahabi1, Siavash Beiranvand1, *, Farshad Hassanzadeh Kiabi2, *, Zahra Goudarzi3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2024Volume: 18
E-location ID: e25896458286590
Publisher ID: e25896458286590
DOI: 10.2174/0125896458286590240325061312
Article History:
Received Date: 16/11/2023Revision Received Date: 13/03/2024
Acceptance Date: 13/03/2024
Electronic publication date: 29/04/2024
Collection year: 2024
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Objective
Adequate knowledge of anesthesia and anesthesiologists can reduce patient anxiety. However, patients in developing countries are known to have relatively lesser knowledge and awareness regarding anesthesia. This study aims to evaluate the knowledge of patients referred for elective surgery regarding regional and general anesthesia and related factors.
Methods
In this descriptive-analytic cross-sectional study, 370 subjects were evaluated by a simple non-random sampling method. The researcher constructed a questionnaire study tool to assess demographic variables, backgrounds, and patients' level of awareness. After the collection, data were entered into the SPSS 21 software and were analyzed using chi-square, variance analysis and independent t-test.
Results
The mean age of our patients was 43.09±17.79 years and the mean score of knowledge regarding general and local anesthesia was 3.62±1.35 and 2.65±1.53, respectively. In this study, patients' awareness about general and local anesthesia had a significant association with female gender, age group 30-40 years, postgraduate education, government job previous local anesthesia, trust in the physician, having a history of surgery and willingness to visit the anesthesiologist before the surgery. In addition, patients who had eyes, nose and throat surgeries, and their source of information was limited, had greater scores, p<0.005. Individuals were more aware of common side effects of local anesthesia than those of general anesthesia. However, over half of the patients preferred general anesthesia due to fear of live experience and sound during surgery.
Conclusion
Basedon the results of the study, the awareness of patients about general anesthesia was greater than regional anesthesia. Overall, increasing awareness by strengthening the level of confidence and trust in anesthesiologists can lead to better postoperative outcomes and reduce patients’ anxiety levels.
