Effects of visual aid on state anxiety, fear and stress level in patients undergoing endoscopy: a randomized controlled trial

Objectives: The present study aimed to calculate the estimated size and confidence interval for the effects of adding visual aid to counselling on anxiety, stress and fear of patients undergoing upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. The secondary aim was to calculate confidence interval for endoscopy-related variables that predict which patients are likely to benefit from visual aids. Method: In a randomized, single-blind, two arm, parallel group, superiority trial, 232 consecutive patients who were scheduled to undergo either gastroscopy or colonoscopy were randomly divided into two intervention groups; counselling with video of endoscopic procedure and counselling with no-video (n = 116 in each group). Primary outcome was anxiety and secondary outcomes were stress and fear. Results: One-way ANCOVA showed that there was significant between group differences of anxiety, stress and fear after controlling for the effect of covariates. Planned contrasts revealed that counselling along with visual aid of endoscopy procedure significantly decreased anxiety [Mean difference at post; -4.26 (-4.47, -4.05), p <.001, partial eta(2) = 0.88], stress [-5.35 (-5.63, -5.07), p <.001, partial eta(2) = 0.86] and fear [-2.82 (-2.97, -2.67), p <.001, partial eta(2) = 0.86] compared to counselling alone. Linear regression showed that gender, nature of complaints and concern over seniority of endoscopist were significant negative predictors, however, satisfaction on briefing of endoscopy procedure was significant positive predictor of outcome variables in visual aid condition. Conclusion: The increase in anxiety, acute stress and fear related to endoscopic procedures can be alleviated with psychological counselling coupled with visual aids before the procedure. Visual aid could lead to supplementary benefits in reducing anxiety scores.