Anxiety and knowledge of patients before being subjected to orthognathic surgery.

OBJECTIVE

to verify the correlation between anxiety level and degree of knowledge in patients before they are subjected to orthognathic surgery.

METHOD: Descriptive cross-sectional study with 40 patients in the preoperative period before orthognathic surgery of a private clinic in the city of São Paulo.

RESULTS

IDATE-trait anxiety levels feature prevalence of medium-level anxiety with 72.5% (n=29), followed by low-level anxiety with 72.5% (n=29) and high-level level anxiety with 10% (n=4). In the pre-operative period, transitory IDATE-state anxiety levels feature medium-level anxiety with 65% (n=26), followed by high-level anxiety with 22.5% (n=9) and low-level anxiety with 10% (n=4). Pearson's correlation coefficient resulted in negative r (-0.2) for anxiety-trait (p 0.197) and in negative r (-0.1) for anxiety-state (p 0.417).

CONCLUSION

The data shows a weak correlation in which greater knowledge about the surgical procedure reduces levels of anxiety that may be related to the absence of appropriate guidance about the surgical procedure.