State-Trait Anxiety and the Experience of Elective Surgery in Children

A study involving paediatric surgery patients aged 11-14 years was carried out in order to test the interaction model of anxiety. Thirty-seven orthopaedic paediatric patients (17 girls and 20 boys) and their mothers were administered the Endler Multidimensional Anxiety Scales (EMAS: Endler, Edwards, & Vitelli, 1991 ). A comparison group of 31 (15 girls and 16 boys) non-hospitalized children were also studied. Results indicated that for the experimental group, high social evaluation trait-anxiety paediatric surgical patients experienced a greater elevation in state-anxiety from Time 1 (non-stress) to Time 2 (surgical stress) conditions when compared to their low social evaluation trait-anxiety counterparts. Mothers of the surgical patients, however, were found to experience increased state-anxiety as a result of their child's surgery irrespective of their own various trait-anxiety levels. As expected, non-hospitalized comparison-group children experienced no significant changes in their trait- and state-anxiety levels across two non-stress conditions.