ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: Since pain in cancer patients is an important factor that greatly affects the quality of life and prognosis, many attempts have been actively made to reduce the pain. Despite continuous effort on reducing pain after Endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD), research has not been done on psychological factors as much as on biological factors affecting pain. The objective of this study is to investigate the psychological factors affecting postoperative pain in gastric tumor patients who underwent gastric ESD. METHODS: 91 gastric tumor patients who visited National Health Service Ilsan Hospital in Korean between May 2015 and June 2016, and received ESD were evaluated. Baseline characteristics including sociodemographic factors, anxiety, depression, and resilience were evaluated before the procedure. Multivariate logistic regression was done to analyze factors affecting postoperative pain. RESULTS: The group with high postoperative pain showed lower alcohol consumption and higher depressive symptom scores than the group with low postoperative pain. Also, the group with high postoperative pain showed lower total resilience score with lower subtotal scores in self-control and positive item. Multivariate logistic regression analysis of the postoperative pain showed that patients with lower score in self-control of resilience [odd ratio (OR), 0.911 ; 95% CI, 0.854–0.971, p=0.004) reported more pain after ESD. CONCLUSIONS: This study showed that patients with lower self-control ability of resilience felt more pain after ESD. Among the psychological factors evaluated in this study, resilience of an individual seems to have effect on pain.