The Influence of Mental Health Diagnoses on Patient Experiences and Outcomes in Patients Undergoing WALANT Hand Surgery

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School of Dental Medicine::Departmental Papers (Dental)
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Dentistry
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Anxiety; Depressive symptoms; Local anesthesia no tourniquet; Mental health; WALANT; Wide awake hand surgery
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2024
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Brian Ford MD; Dillon Neumann BS; Matthew Pina MD; Rafael Olivieri-Ortiz BS; Joel Ferreira MD; Anthony Parrino MD
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Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to gauge whether patients with preexisting mental health conditions have desirable outcomes when undergoing wide-awake local anesthesia with no tourniquet (WALANT) hand surgery. Methods: A retrospective review of 133 patients who underwent WALANT surgery by 2 senior authors from August 2019 to October 2020 was performed. Patients were administered a 10-question post operative survey detailing perioperative pain, experience, and satisfaction concerning their procedure. Analysis was performed for patient responses to the questionnaire, demographics, comorbidities, and patient-reported outcomes using the Single Assessment Numeric Evaluation (SANE). Results: There were 61 patients identified as having a preexisting psychiatric diagnosis compared to 70 patients without who underwent WALANT surgery. Comparing psychiatric diagnosis and nonpsychiatric diagnosis cohorts, there was no significant difference in preoperative anxiety (3.75 vs 3.30), pain during procedure (0.67 vs 0.56), or pain after surgery (4.89 vs 4.26). There was a significantly higher pain score with preoperative injection in the psychiatric diagnosis cohort (4.07 vs 2.93). When asked if they would have a WALANT procedure again, 95.1% of patients in the psychiatric diagnosis cohort and 98.6% of patients in the nonpsychiatric diagnosis group said they would. There was no significant difference in average preoperative SANE scores (59.67 [no psych diagnosis] vs 61.70 [psych diagnosis]) or post operative SANE scores (82.82 [no psych diagnosis] vs 81.06 [psych diagnosis]) between the two cohorts. Conclusions: WALANT surgery was nearly as well tolerated in patients with a preexisting mental health diagnosis when compared to those without a preexisting diagnosis. Clinical Relevance: Surgeons who are currently or potentially performing WALANT surgery should not rule out patients as eligible candidates because of a prior diagnosis of a mental health condition.

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2024-02-02
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Journal of Hand Surgery Global Online
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