BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES:
Pain is a subjective manifestation of unpleasant, personal and untransferable experience, produced by tissue injury involving physical and chemical body mechanisms. This study aimed at identifying the presence of acute pain in the postoperative period of appendectomy, at checking pain records, at describing postoperative complications and at comparing pain management and the adequacy of analgesia.
METHODS:
This is a transversal, descriptive and quantitative study. Sample was made up of 41 patients submitted to appendectomy. A semi-structured interview was carried out with information about use of analgesics, presence of postoperative pain, pain site, consequences of pain and visual analog scale. To evaluate pain management and the quality of analgesia, the Pain Management Index proposed by the World Health Organization was calculated.
RESULTS:
From total sample, 61% were males, mean age was 34.36±11.64 years, 70.7% were married and all patients have referred pain. In 90.2% of cases there was no pain recording in medical charts. Surgical incision was the major pain site and its primary consequence was impaired physical mobility. As to pain intensity, 22.2% of patients had moderate pain and were inadequately treated according to Pain Management Index.
CONCLUSION:
There has been considerable inadequacy of analgesia, pain recording in medical charts was scarce and no nursing professional has recorded pain. Surgical incision was major pain complaint site and impaired mobility was the primary complication. Our data bring about the need for investments in health professionals qualification with regard to pain management.
Analgesia; Appendectomy; Pain; Pain measurement