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PREPARE - PREoPerative Anxiety REduction

I

Integrated University Hospital Trust of Verona

Status

Completed

Conditions

Surgery
Anxiety Disorder

Treatments

Behavioral: Psychological intervention

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT03408002
Prog. 1288CESC

Details and patient eligibility

About

The study aims to verify if a short individual psychological intervention might increase perceived self-efficacy in managing preoperative anxiety in patients who will undergo pancreatic surgery. It is a randomized clinical trial where half of participants will attend a psychological intervention based on "the four elements protocol" by Elan Shapiro the day before surgery, while the other half will follow usual care.

Full description

Patients who have to undergo surgery experience multiple sources of stress. A recent narrative review carried out on 115 studies by Powell et al. (2016) reported different and inconsistent findings on the relation between psychological interventions and surgery outcomes, due to the heterogeneity of these interventions, mainly based on information giving and patient education, and the very different samples of patients considered. Some evidences showed that pre-operative psychological interventions may contribute to reduce post-operative pain, duration of hospital stay (mean difference of 0.52 days) and negative affect. No studies were conducted with patients who had to undergo pancreatic surgery nor specific psychological interventions were devoted to increase self-efficacy in managing anxiety.

The aim of the present study is to verify if a short individual psychological intervention devoted to improve patient's ability to manage anxiety could increase his/her confidence to cope with pancreatic surgery, either in terms of perceived self-efficacy (main outcome) or less state anxiety reported on STAI-Y1 scale. Post-surgery outcomes are also collected: pain reported during the days following surgical intervention, length of hospital stay and number and type of clinical complications.

The study will involve 400 patients randomly divided in two arms and it is organized in four phases: T0,T1,T2,T3.

T0: Once obtained the informed consent, demographic information will be collected using a structured questionnaire. Clinical variables will be collected by self-administered tools, for which patients can ask support, if needed.

T1: The day before surgery, all patients will indicate their perceived self-efficacy in managing anxiety and will fulfil specific anxiety scales.

T2: after randomization, patients in the experimental group will participate to the psychological intervention, whereas the control group will follow usual care.

T3: After surgery pain, length of hospital stay and the number of post-operative complications within 30 days will be evaluated as secondary outcomes on all patients.

Enrollment

400 patients

Sex

All

Ages

18 to 80 years old

Volunteers

No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

  • 18 - 80 years old
  • cognitively able to give personal consent to participate to the study
  • to be scheduled to have general anaesthesia for pancreatic surgery

Exclusion criteria

  • age under 18 years and over 80 years
  • cognitively unable to give personal consent to participate to the study
  • postponement of surgical operation

Trial design

Primary purpose

Prevention

Allocation

Randomized

Interventional model

Parallel Assignment

Masking

Single Blind

400 participants in 2 patient groups

control group
No Intervention group
Description:
no intervention
Psychological intervention
Experimental group
Description:
Psychological intervention using the "Four elements" technique elaborated by Shapiro and reported in M. Luber (2009) during a psychological consultation conducted the day before surgery.
Treatment:
Behavioral: Psychological intervention

Trial contacts and locations

1

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Data sourced from clinicaltrials.gov

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