EFFECTS OF REPEATED GENERAL ANAESTHESIA ON THE LEVEL OF PRE-PROCEDURE ANXIETY IN CHILDREN UNDERGOING RADIOTHERAPY.

Radiotherapy procedures are used to damage or destroy growing cancer cells.(1) This strategic use of ionized radiation is being practiced since the early 20th century and is very effective in destroying diseased cancer cells while sparing the healthy ones.(2) These procedures require patients to stay absolutely still, hence requiring general anesthesia in case of children compared to the adults. The treatment also requires multiple cycles of radiotherapy for which children have to undergo general anaesthesia multiple times.(3) Multiple anaesthetics for the same child may lead to preoperative anxiety, increased autonomic fluctuations, increased demand for anaesthetics and nausea/vomiting.(4-5) Pre-operative anxiety not only causes physical but also emotional and psychological trauma.(6) Such patients, subjected to anxiety, may face fear and potential hesitance in visiting the pre-anesthesia clinics for evaluation, induction and problems in pre-operative and recovery span.(7-8)It is therefore important to gauge the extent of this anxiety and to see whether it increases or decreases with subsequent cycles of treatment .Unless this is identified it will be difficult to put appropriate treatments in place.

Though previous studies are available on pre-operative anxiety in children but there has been little research about level of a child's anxiety under going repeated general anesthesia, especially during radiotherapy sessions. We were unable to identify any study on the subject in our literature search, a gap that needs research.

Several scales are available to evaluate anxiety in children(9), mYPAS scale is a standard It is also important to measure the anxiety levels of the parents accompanying the child, since this may have an effect on behavior.