Last update:
10-Sep-2004

The so-called surgical experience is a multifaceted pre-operative experiencial phenomenon created by a combination of factors, including anesthesia anxiety, fear of cutting and wounding, anticipation of pain, a generalized sense of threat against the self integrity of the body and the specific threat from the disease requiring surgical treatment. All patients who are going to have a surgical intervention go through this experience. This is the starting point for the most basic pre-operative psychiatric symptoms, those of anxiety and depression, which may have an unfavorable influence on the post-operative course. Overt post-operative psychiatric problems may be observed in relatively small numbers of patients, which have a less experiential and much greater psychiatric clinical character, sometimes very serious. Specific psychiatric problems may possibly emerge after certain surgical operations, and in the case of cosmetic surgery serious psychiatric phenomena may precede and complicate the whole process.

Key words: Post-operative psychiatric problems, Pre-operative psychiatric symptoms, Surgical experience.