The Relationship Between Preoperative COVID-19 Fear and Anxiety Level Undergoing Elective Surgery Patients: A Cross-Sectional Study.
Tansu Ayik, Yasemin Eda Tekin
PMID 42740423WHAT IT FOUND
Elective surgery patients scored 31 for state anxiety and 38.6 for trait anxiety on a 20-80 scale, both in the mild range.
COVID-19 fear was not linked to state anxiety and only weakly linked to trait anxiety; state and trait anxiety were strongly linked.
Key findings
01Patients reported a mean state anxiety score of 31 and trait anxiety score of 38.6, and 68% said they experienced preoperative anxiety.
02COVID-19 fear was not significantly correlated with state anxiety (r = 0.051, p = 0.264) and had only a very weak positive correlation with trait anxiety (r = 0.107, p = 0.020).
03State and trait anxiety were strongly correlated (r = 0.651, p < 0.001).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study was done in only two departments of one university hospital, so it may not apply to other surgical services, emergency surgery or different settings. It used convenience sampling and voluntary participation. Some eligible patients declined or had incomplete questionnaires, so people who declined or were more distressed may be underrepresented. The design was cross-sectional, so it cannot show whether fear of COVID-19 caused anxiety or whether anxiety influenced fear scores. All psychological measures were self-report, so recall and social desirability may affect answers. The paper reports lower internal consistency for the anxiety scale than in the original validation. The direction of the surgical-information finding is inconsistent between the text and the table.
Declared interests
No funding or conflict of interest was reported; the authors state they have nothing to report.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that COVID-19 fear caused preoperative anxiety. The study found no significant association with state anxiety and only a weak association with trait anxiety, and its cross-sectional design cannot show causation. Do not use the surgical-information result as evidence that extra education lowers anxiety: the text and table disagree about the direction, and no intervention was tested.