Meshkani Z.s, Sedaghat M, Afshin A,
Volume 65, Issue 14 (Vol 65, Supplement 2 2008)
Abstract
Background: Surgery operations are the fearful events among all other medical procedures.
This fear causes anxiety and stress which affects the outcome of treatments, recovery from
surgery and some maladaptive behaviors. To cope with surgery worries and minimize the
fear, it is important to study these fears and its associated factors. This study attempts to
explore the surgery worries and the associated factors among Iranian high school adolescents.
Methods: To measure surgery worries, high school adolescents of age 11-15 completed the
Child Worries Questionnaire (CPCI) adolescent form, and also answered the questions about
the 14 independent variables (sex, age, parents education and occupation, previous
hospitalization experience of child and immediate family and friends, number of
hospitalization during Child’s life long, previous surgery experience of child and her or his
immediate families, death of close friends in hospital). Multivariate regression method was
used for statistical analysis to determine the effective factors.
Results: The results of this study showed that the Iranian Adolescents have most worries
about the “Not being able to do the same things as before” and least worries about “What I
will feel during the anesthesia”. The factors associated with Surgery worries are parent’s
education (P=.021 for father and 0.049 for mother), adolescent previous experience and
number of hospitalizations (P=0.025 and P=0.008, respectively), the number of previous
hospitalizations (P=.003), previous experience of hospitalization of immediate family and
friends (P=0.035). The findings of this study have implications for parents, family, hospitals’
staff and care given.
Conclusions: It seems, according to the findings of this study, there should be a special
educational program for children who are going to be operated in a hospital ward to reduce
their worriships.
