Videos Reduce Fear of Pain for Patients With Cancer Receiving Port Catheters

Delivery of information via videos more effectively reduced fear of postoperative pain in patients with cancer who are going to receive implantable port catheters. Nonetheless, video information had no effect on actual pain levels following the procedure. These findings were reported in Cancer Nursing.

Postoperative pain levels and fear of pain can be a concern for patients who are going to receive implantable port catheters due, in part, to the needles used. This study aimed to assess the utility of video information prior to implantable port catheter insertion to address these concerns.

A controlled trial of 84 patients with cancer randomly assigned 42 patients to a control arm and 42 patients to an experimental, intervention arm. The study was conducted between July and December 2022 at Trakya University Health Center for Medical Research and Practice in Edirne, Turkey.

Analyses included descriptive analyses, χ² analysis, the Mann-Whitney U test, and the Student’s t test were used to evaluate the data.

During the preoperative period, the average score of the fear of severe pain subdimension was significantly higher in the control arm (29.79±9.86) than in the intervention arm (24.67±8.01; P <.05), suggesting video information was effective in reducing fear.

Assessment of postoperative levels of actual pain showed no difference between the visual analog scale scores of the experimental and control arms (Z, −1.300; P =.194). The difference between preoperative and postoperative pain was insignificant in the experimental arm (Z, −1.660; P =.098); however, postoperative pain was significantly higher than preoperative pain in the control group (Z, −2.413; P =.014).

“The use of audiovisual materials such as videos for multimedia-based information is effective in making remembering the information easy. Video-based information may be more useful in managing fear of pain in patients than traditional verbal information,” the authors concluded. “The findings of this study can serve as a guide for clinical work and for developing targeted measures to reduce fear of pain.”

Reference

Işıklı AG, Soydaş D, Önüt F, Şen H. The effect of video information before insertion of an implantable port catheter on cancer patients’ fear of pain and pain levels. Cancer Nurs. Published online July 7, 2023. doi:10.1097/NCC.0000000000001267