An Investigation of the Effect of Anxiety and Religious Beliefs on Decision-Making Attitudes to Lumbar Microdiscectomy

Background: The effects of religious beliefs on health have been investigated for many years. Although this issue has been investigated in many scientific studies, whether there is a significant relationship between anxiety and religiousness is still discussed. This study aims to investigate the effects of anxiety levels and religiousness on Lumbar Microdiscectomy acceptance attitudes. Methodology: The participants were divided into two groups as those who accepted Lumbar Microdiscectomy and those who did not; these patients were asked to fill in two different forms that were developed to measure pre-operative anxiety level and religiousness level. The patients' religiousness level was identified using the "Religious Orientation Scale". The anxiety levels of the patients were determined by using "Anxiety Specific to Surgery Questionnaire". Results: The anxiety level of the group that did not accept an operation was 33.48 +/- 8.05, which was significantly higher than the anxiety level (27.12 +/- 7.32) of the group which accepted an operation (p=0.001). The Pearson correlation analysis performed between the anxiety and religiousness scale scores indicated a significant, weak-level, and negative relationship (p=0.033, r=-0,320). When the effect of anxiety level between the groups who accepted an operation and who did not is controlled with ANCOVA test, no significant differences were found between the religious scale scores of the groups (p=0.572). Conclusion: Apart from the effect of religiousness, decision for Lumbar Microdiscectomy is considered to be affected by several multidimensional factors such as patients' anxiety levels, previous disease experiences, importance they give to quality of life, post-operative risks such as experiencing severe pain or getting paralyzed, anxiety of leaving from the family, loss of independence, fear of operation, and fear of death.