Waiting Time and Pain During Office Hysteroscopy

Pain, anxiety and patient satisfaction in office hysteroscopy, is there a link? Are patient satisfaction questionnaires reliable?

“…27 Carta on the other hand found waiting time (along with age and menopause) to be associated with increased pain but no increase in anxiety was found. 25 Gupta stated women in hysteroscopy outpatient units experience higher levels of anxiety than other patients in gynecology care. 26 Kokanali also found a positive correlation between waiting time and anxiety with increased pain scores.…”

“…23 OH patients may have higher VAS scores with longer waiting time and women with higher STAI scores may experience more pain or indeed there may not be any correlation between STAI and VAS scores. [24][25][26] Distractions such as music may be associated with lower pain and anxiety. 27 As to patient satisfaction questionnaires, how well do they correlate with pain score?…”

Parenterally Administered Moderate Sedation and Paracervical Block Versus General Anesthesia for Hysteroscopic Polypectomy: A Pilot Study Comparing Postoperative Outcomes

“…Despite these developments, there are still several limiting factors that can compromise the success of operative hysteroscopy, causing pain to the patient; some are caused by instruments (unavailability of instruments for minihysteroscopy, rigid hysteroscopes, distending medium, and use of speculum/tenaculum), and others are related to patients' features (nulliparity, chronic pelvic pain, and emotional state), size of the polyps [18,19], and surgeons' skills. For these reasons, in our opinion, it is important to still consider day-case operative hysteroscopy with local anesthesia and conscious sedation as the best option.…”

Use of video-based multimedia information to reduce anxiety before office hysteroscopy.

“…Despite the less invasive nature of the office hysteroscopy compared to many surgical procedures, pre-procedural anxiety is still a critical issue affecting patients' satisfaction [6,7]. A previous study on women undergoing OH revealed that 80% of the women had a moderate to severe anxiety state, defined by the authors as a state anxiety value ≥ 34 [8].…”