Resumen de The effects of informed consent format on preoperative anxiety in patients undergoing inferior third molar surgery

Daniel Torres Lagares, Marisa Heras Meseguer, Francisco Azcárate Velázquez, Pilar Hita Iglesias, Gonzalo Ruiz de León, Esther Hernández Pacheco, José Luis Gutiérrez Pérez

• Objectives: To evaluate the effect of informed consent format on preoperative anxiety of patients.

  Material and Methods: We performed a prospective study (91 patients) undergoing lower third molar extraction.

  Patients were distributed into three groups. Informed consent for surgery was obtained through a written docu - ment, an oral interview or a video recording. Afterwards, patients were asked about their anxiety level and the effect the informed consent had had on it.

  Results: Whereas the information conveyed both in oral and written formats relieved the patient to some extent (in a scale of -3 to +3) 0.97±1.21 and 0.29±0.97, respectively), the video recording increased patient's anxiety in a sta - tistically significant way (in a scale of -3 to +3, -0.57±1.43). The difference obtained between the values obtained in oral and written information was not statistically significant.

  Discussion: The most adequate format, according to our study, would be the oral format.