Journal of Anesthesiology and Pain

Aim and Background:

The assessment of patient satisfaction with anesthesia, the balance

between expectations and perception of what was received, is an essential component of

continuous quality improvement in anesthesiology. In our center there have been few studies

conducted in the anesthesia field, which have assessed patient’s satisfaction. In this prospective

study we have evaluated patient satisfaction with anesthesia in patients 24 h after surgery.

Methods and Materials:

This study was performed in Sina hospital in Tehran, Iran on patients

aged more than 18 yr. They all underwent elective surgical procedures with anesthesia. One of

the anesthesia staff members took the interview one day after surgery and asked the patients

questions for the structured questionnaire designed to measure patient satisfaction with

anesthesia. At the same time, some specific questions were also asked to find factors that could

be associated with such satisfaction.

Findings:

The data was gathered from 500 patients (mean age: 41± 16 yr and males: 65.2%).

The overall satisfaction (complete and relative) was high (98.8%) although 6 patients (1.2%)

were dissatisfied with their anesthesia care. After analysis of several factors related to the

patients’surgery and anesthesia, a strong relation was found between spinal anesthesia and

satisfaction (p=0.003).There was not any relation between age, gender, education, duration of

anesthesia and kind of surgery with patients’ satisfaction.

Conclusions:

Our study found that patient satisfaction with anesthesia was very high in our