563 High Rate of Discordant Pain Levels Reported by Patients and Physicians During Gastrointestinal Endoscopy

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Procedural sedation is given to reduce patient anxiety, discomfort, pain and to improve outcomes in endoscopy. Data are limited regarding patient satisfaction with endoscopy. Our goal was to evaluate physician perceptions of patient pain and anxiety before and after endoscopy and factors associated with their correlation. METHODS: We performed a prospective study of 233 consecutive patients who received procedural sedation during endoscopy from August to November 2018 at the Portland VA Medical Center. Patients were given a pre-endoscopy survey to assess expectations and a post-endoscopy survey to assess procedural satisfaction, and physician were given a post-endoscopy survey only. Outcomes included expected and actual pain, anxiety, and sedation level during endoscopy and was reported on a scale from 0 to 5. RESULTS: Upper endoscopy, colonoscopy, and bi-directional endoscopy were performed in 30%, 60%, and 10% of cases, with an average procedural time of 19.1 minutes. Midazolam and fentanyl were most commonly used for sedation with an average dose of 4.0 ±0.1 mg and 102.5 ± 2.7 mcg, respectively. A minority of patients reported alcohol, marijuana, non-opiate pain medication, and opiate use (39%, 15%, 19%, and 16%, respectively). Pre-procedural anxiety and expected level of pain significantly improved with patient's post-procedural assessment (Tables 1 and 2). The average difference of anxiety and pain levels pre-endoscopy and post-endoscopy was 0.48 and 0.41, respectively. There was poor concordance between the physician's perceived patient pain and patient reported pain level during endoscopy (61%) with an overall Cohen's kappa of 0.258. Several factors associated with reduced patient and physician pain correlation included the presence of mental health disorders and use of benzodiazepines, SSRI, or SNRI (Table 3). Despite the discordance, the majority of patients reported satisfaction in pain control and would return for a repeat procedure (85% and 95%, respectively). CONCLUSION: Patients reported higher levels of pre-procedure anxiety and expected pain than actual anxiety and pain post-procedure. Physicians have poor concordance with patients with respect to pain levels, especially with more severe pain scores and in the presence of mental health disorders. Patients at high risk for discordance may benefit from more thorough pre-procedural counseling and a lower threshold for escalating doses of sedation during endoscopy.