Anxiety and knowledge of patients before being subjected to orthognathic surgery

ABSTRACT 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.