Assessment of anxiety in patients awaiting surgery in a referral hospital in Rwanda

Background: Preoperative anxiety is a common occurrence in patients awaiting surgery. Preoperative anxiety adversely affects anaesthesia and surgical process and increases the risk of postoperative complications. Level of anxiety in patients awaiting surgical procedures in Rwanda is not well known or documented. Objective: To assess preoperative anxiety and associated factors of patients awaiting surgery at a teaching hospital in Kigali. Methods: A cross-sectional study design was adopted. A convenience sampling method was used to recruit 151 adult patients, and the instrument entitled “Pre-operative Intrusive Thoughts Inventory (PITI)” anxiety scale was used to assess anxiety. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse data. Results: Nearly three quarters (72.8%) of participants had a high level of clinically significant preoperative anxiety. Patients awaiting orthopaedic surgery were 10 times more likely to have clinically significant pre-operative anxiety (OR 10.22; 95%; CI 1.144 - 91.304; P= 0.037), whereas participants with impending Cesarean (OR: 0.03; 95% CI-0.002-0.568; P=0.018), and older participants had decreased pre-operative anxiety levels (OR: 0.22; 95% CI 0.075 - 0.650; P=0.006). Conclusion: Patients awaiting surgery had clinically significant pre-operative anxiety level (72.8%) associated with age, medical diagnosis and type of surgical intervention. A preoperative intervention incorporating individual characteristics is needed to reduce preoperative anxiety. Keywords: Preoperative, anxiety, patients, education