The Amsterdam Preoperative Anxiety and Information Scale (APAIS)

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to assess patients' anxiety level and information requirement in the preoperative phase. During routine preoperative screening, 320 patients were asked to assess their anxiety and information requirement on a six-item questionnaire, the Amsterdam Preoperative Anxiety and Information Scale (APAIS). Two hundred patients also completed Spielberger's State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-State). Patients were able to complete the questionnaire in less than 2 min. On factor analysis, two factors emerged clearly: anxiety and the need for information. The anxiety scale correlated highly (0.74) with the STAI-State. It emerged that 32% of the patients could be considered as "anxiety cases" and over 80% of patients have a positive attitude toward receiving information. Moreover, results demonstrated that 1) women were more anxious that men; 2) patients with a high information requirement also had a high level of anxiety; 3) patients who had never undergone an operation had a higher information requirement than those who had. The APAIS can provide anesthesiologists with a valid, reliable, and easily applicable instrument for assessing the level of patients' preoperative anxiety and the need for information.

The effect of music with and without binaural beat audio on operative anxiety in patients undergoing cataract surgery: a randomized controlled trial

“…The STAI is now the standard tool for measuring preoperative anxiety. 10 Le Scouarnec et al 17 studied the use of binaural beat tones for treatment of patients diagnosed with mild anxiety. Their results showed a significant reduction in post-treatment STAI scores after 4 weeks of regularly listening to tapes imbedded with binaural beat music tones, although physiologic measure of anxiety reduction was not performed.…”

“…9 The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory is a validated 40-item self-report measure that contains 20 items measuring state anxiety (STAI-S) and 20 items measuring trait anxiety (STAI-T). [9][10][11] Scores for state and trait components each range from 20 to 80 with a higher score corresponding to higher anxiety levels. Blood pressure and heart rate was recorded on admission (baseline), at the start of the operation, and 20-min after the initiation of the operation.…”

The Heidelberg Peri‐anaesthetic Questionnaire – development of a new refined psychometric questionnaire*

“…Item discriminant validity was assessed by the extent to which items correlated with dimensions they were not hypothesised to represent. External validity was tested by correlations between scores and the visual analogue scales (VAS) (convergent validity), as well as the Spielberger StateTrait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) [24] and the Amsterdam Pre-operative Anxiety and Information Scale (APAIS) [25], the two latter on a subsample of 120 patients. Discriminant validity was determined by using either dimension mean scores across patient groups differing in sociodemographic rating (age, sex, school education, marital status, etc.)…”

Perioperative Anxiety

“…The prevalence is high; ranging from 32% for general surgery [3] to 50% in coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) [4]. Prevalence is similar or even higher in Asian population [5].…”