Don’t Stress Out- Especially If You’re Going Into Surgery!
Written by Maggie Bauer
Edited by Connie Quan
July 31st 2021
Edited by Connie Quan
July 31st 2021
These days, it seems like everyone is stressed. People of all ages and stages of life struggle with stress. But, could these feelings of anxiety manifest themselves into physical symptoms? One possible link is pain perception. Persistent pain after surgery is common amongst patients, affecting around “50%”, with about “5-10%” suffering from severe pain. Usually, doctors prescribe medication to help manage this pain, but opioids and other drugs can be addictive and come with serious side effects. Recently, there has been more interest in the factors leading to higher rates of pain-related disorders. By recognizing and providing interventions to help reduce the presence of risk factors, the prevalence of postoperative pain disorders can be reduced.
Psychological disorders such as anxiety and depression have been linked to increased pain perception, but what about short-term stressors in people with no history of mental illness? One study testing this modeled the effect of stress on pain perception in rats. In order to simulate feelings of anxiety, scientists chose two methods: immobilization and forced swimming. In both cases, these methods were confirmed to cause stress in the rats through the measuring of hormone levels linked to feelings of anxiety.
To measure the pain a rat may feel due to an incision from surgery, an incision was made on the paw of the rat, and it was exposed to a stimulus meant to cause feelings of pain. The time it took for the rats to move their paw off the stimulus was recorded. The study consisted of multiple tests exposing one group of rats to either immobilization or forced swimming over the course of several consecutive days before the surgery. Another two groups were subjected to the same stressors after surgery. Their times from the stimulus tests were recorded and compared to a control group, which is a group that had not experienced the stress-inducing activities. In both cases, the result suggested that these stressors didn’t actually affect feelings of pain, but it did affect how long the post-surgical pain lasted. This result was the same no matter if it was immobilization or forced swimming causing the stress, or if it was done pre-surgery or post-surgery.
Pain perception is not very well understood by the medical community, and as a result, efforts to cure pain disorders rely heavily on pharmaceuticals with not many other options available. But instead of showing changes in the magnitude of pain perception, the results of this study indicate that stress increases the amount of time that pain is felt, which could mean a longer post-surgery recovery time. If we can identify the risk factors prevalent in those who develop postoperative pain, we can help mediate those problems and hopefully prevent patients from developing pain in the first place. So the next time your doctor tells you you need surgery, try pulling out your Calm app. It may spare you some pain later on!