Preoperative Anxiety Among Hospitalized Pediatric Patients with CHD: A Qualitative Study From the Perspectives of Health Care Professionals and Parents.

PURPOSE: Preoperative anxiety commonly occurs in children with congenital heart disease(CHD), undermining their psychological function and postoperative recovery. Targeted anxiety interventions require a systematic understanding of children's preoperative stress. As key caregivers, parents and health care professionals(HCPs) undrepin intervention development; therefore, this study aimed to explore how parents and HCPs perceive preoperative anxiety in pediatric patients with CHD within the Chinese cutural and social context.

DESIGN

This studyadopted a descripitive phenomenological qualitative approach.

METHODS

. Between January and April 2026, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 parents of pediatric patients with CHD and nine HCPs in a tertiary hospital in Kunming. Interview data were managed via NVivo 12.0 and analyzed through thematic analysis.

FINDINGS: (1) Existence versus non-existence of preoperative anxiety, (2) Preoperative anxiety due to children and parental factors, (3) Diverse manifestations of preoperative anxiety, and (4) Ways of coping with Preoperative Anxiety.

CONCLUSIONS

Anxiety in pediatric patients with CHD is sometimes suppressed or overlooked. It is crucial to improve the ability of parents and HCPs to identify pediatric anxiety and encourage children to express their emotions. Surgery-related information should be delivered to children in age-appropriate and comprehensible language. Given the communal nature of family emotions, parental negative emotions also require attention, and unnecessary parent-child separation should be minimized. Among the management strategies for preoperative anxiety, pharmacological interventions exert rapid effects, while non-pharmacological interventions are more favored due to the absence of adverse reactions. Influenced by the Confucian culture of "forbearance", some parents tend to ignore their children's anxious emotions, highlighting the importance of educating parents about the value of appropriate support.