Abstract:We investigated the pain and anxiety of patients after open heart surgery. All the operations were performed under fentanyl-combined inhalation anesthetics, with the support of artificial circulation. The seventy of pain and anxiety was assessed with visual analogue scale (VAS). The result showed that (1) pain was mainly located around the incision site;(2) pain during move or cough was severer than pain at rest; (3)pain score reached the peak 12-36 hours after the removal of intubation (student's t-test, P<0.01); and (4)pain scores correlated significantly with anxiety (the r value was 0. 56 for pain during move or cough, and 0. 57 for pain at rest, P<0.05). Cluster analysis indicated that 55 % of patients after cardiac surgery suffered from severe pain. Within 4 hours after the removal of intubation, all patients with severe pain had a pain score at rest over 2. Our results present a criterion for the selection of cases with past-operative pain as well as the method of post-op erative analgesia.
