Clinical Study of TEAS Intervention in Relieving Anxiety Before Thoracoscopic Surgery

This single-center randomized sham-controlled trial will be conducted in cardiothoracic surgery department of the Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine in China. A total of 92 eligible participants with pulmonary nodules (size ≥ 8mm) who will undergo VATS will be randomly allocated to a TEAS group and a sham TEAS (STEAS) group in a 1:1 ratio. Daily TEAS/STEAS treatment will be performed starting on 3 days before the VATS and continued for three consecutive days, once per day. The primary outcome will be the minimal clinically important difference of generalized anxiety disorder scale score change between the day before surgery with the baseline. The secondary outcomes include serum concentrations of 5-hydroxytryptamine, norepinephrine and gamma-aminobutyric acid, intraoperative anesthetic consumption, time to postoperative chest tube removal, postoperative pain, length of postoperative hospital stay. The adverse events will be recorded for safety evaluation. All data in the study will be analyzed using the SPSS 21.0 statistical software package.