title: Impact of menthal representation of disease and wound-related subjective perception of disease on convalescence after surgical treatment.
abstract: Compared to open surgery, laparoscopic treatment has been shown to have several advantages, including lower levels of postoperative pain, faster recovery, and better cosmetic results. Nevertheless, the advantages of laparoscopy are being debated as possibly not being merely related to biomedical factors.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study consisted of two sub-studies. In the first study, 150 healthy, previously unoperated volunteers, not employed in the health services, were included. Healthy volunteers, from the latter study, were given questionnaires that presented different sizes of post-operative wounds and examined their perception of the severity of the illnesses that were treated by surgery leading to these wounds. In the second study, data was collected from 65 laparoscopic cholecystectomy patients and 35 patients treated by the open approach cholecystectomy. Patients from the second study were examined prior to operation and 1 month after surgery with a questionnaire evaluating their subjective perception of the disease.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Subjective perception of the severity of disease (SPSD) was similar between the laparoscopy and the open approach cholecystectomy patients before the operation (respectively, 6.25±1.7 and 6.06±2.2; ns). At the follow-up, a significant decrease of SPSD among laparoscopy patients was observed (post-op score = 3.28±0.8, p<0.05 in paired t-Student test), but not in the open approach patients (6.42±1.7, ns in paired t-Student test). The volunteers perceived that the disease of the laparoscopically treated patients was less serious than the disease of those treated with open surgery.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The authors would like to emphasize that the study presents a new approach to the explanation of the so called "laparoscopy phenomenon", i.e. much faster and smoother recovery after relatively larger and more serious surgical procedures. We believe that the benefits observed among the videoscopy patients might be, apart from immunological and pain-related factors, attributed to the psychological influence of cognitive representations of the disease severity on pain, analgetics use, and recovery.
authors.affiliation: Department of General, Endocrine and Transplant Surgery, Medical University in Gdańsk.
authors.forename: Tomasz
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Stefaniak
authors.forename: Joanna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dziedziul
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Walerzak
authors.forename: Katarzyna
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Adamczyk
authors.forename: Derek Singh
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Gill
authors.forename: Ad
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vingerhoets
authors.forename: Dominika
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Babinska
authors.forename: Magdalena
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Trus
authors.forename: Andrzej J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Lachinski
authors.forename: Zbigniew
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Śledziński
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002763:Cholecystectomy / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000523:psychology*; D003289:Convalescence / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D010535:Laparoscopy / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011044:Poland; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D016896:Treatment Outcome