Educational actions during the preoperative period: impact on the pain and on the analgesia during the postoperative period

The study was based on a controlled and randomized clinical essay. The goals were to evaluate the effects of an educational intervention performed during the preoperative period on pain and pain management during the postoperative period. Eighty-nine patients of the Orthopedics Institute of the Hospital das Clínicas of the Medical College of the University of Sao Paulo who were submitted to an orthopedic surgery on their legs comprised the experimental group (47 patients) and the control group (42 patients). Patients of the experimental group received routine instructions of the Institution as well as specific instructions related to pain and pain management during the preoperative period, while patients of the control group received only routine instructions. Patients were evaluated during the first and second days of the postoperative period and compared in terms of their pain intensity, discomfort caused by pain, satisfaction from the use of analgesia, number of analgesic requirements and consumption of additional analgesic medications. Statistical tests were conducted to determine the possible relationship among the variants -- a 5% significance level was used in all of them. Patients of both groups were considered homogeneous concerning the variants sex, age, school education, family income, number of previous similar surgery and axiety level . Moreover, they were also subject to three analgesic protocols. It was observed that patients of the experimental group experienced less pain during the first (p=0,035) and immediate days that followed the postoperative period (p=0,005), little discomfort caused by pain during the second day of the postoperative period (p=0,005) and they took a smaller number of additional analgesic medications during the second day of the postoperative period (p=0,017). Statistically significant differences were not observed between the two groups regarding satisfaction from the use of analgesia and the number of analgesic requirements during the two days following the postoperative period. Educational actions during the preoperative period influenced the level of pain discomfort, and consumption of additional medications during the postoperative period.