Effects of the Specialized Preoperative Waiting Room on Preoperative Anxiety in Pediatric Patients

Preoperative anxiety is a common event-related psychological disorder, which increases the perioperative risk, especially among children. The aim of this study is to establish a specialized waiting room for pediatric patients and investigate the efficiency on preoperative anxiety. This is a single center, open label, randomized controlled trial. Eligible children were randomly allocated into the routine waiting group (control group) and the specialized waiting group (study group). The Children's Emotional Manifestation Scale (CEMS), crying times, separation emotion, the degree of coordination, satisfaction score of parents, and quality of postoperative recovery were collected and analyzed. A total of 150 children were included and analyzed. Patients in the study group had lower CEMS score, less crying times, better separation emotion and coordination degree, and better recovery quality on the 1^st postoperative day than those in the control group (p<0.05). However, the recovery quality on the 3^rd or 7^th postoperative day was comparable between the groups (p>0.05). Besides, the guardians in the study group gave higher scores to the preoperative waiting procedure (p<0.05). Our specialized waiting room for pediatric patients is an effective non-pharmacological method to alleviating preoperative anxiety, increasing parents’ satisfaction score, and enhancing recovery quality of the 1^st postoperative day.