The Effect of Douyin Short Videos on Alleviating Preoperative Anxiety and Postoperative Pain in Patients Undergoing Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy

Imagine you are about to go on a big, scary ride at an amusement park. Your heart is racing, your stomach is doing flip-flops, and you're terrified of the drop. That feeling is what doctors call "preoperative anxiety." Now, imagine that right after the ride, your body aches and hurts. That's "postoperative pain." For a long time, the medical world has known that if you are super scared before a surgery, your body often hurts more afterward. It's like your brain is a volume knob: when the fear is turned up to maximum, the pain dial seems to get cranked up, too.

To fix this, doctors usually try to explain the ride to you (patient education) or try to distract you with a funny movie so you forget about the drop (distraction). But there's a new player in town: short videos on apps like Douyin. These are quick, snappy clips that people watch on their phones all day. The big question researchers wanted to answer was: Can these tiny, fast videos be the secret weapon to calm your nerves before surgery and make the pain afterward feel a little less sharp? This study dives into that exact question, testing if a few minutes of scrolling can actually change how your body feels during a real medical procedure.

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The Big Experiment: Surgery, Scrolling, and Soothing

A team of researchers from Fuyang City People's Hospital decided to put this idea to the test. They gathered 300 people who were scheduled to have a laparoscopic cholecystectomy. In plain English, that's a minimally invasive surgery to remove the gallbladder, usually done because of painful stones. The goal was to see if watching Douyin videos could help these patients feel better than the usual hospital routine.

The researchers split the patients into three different groups, like three different teams in a game:

1. The Education Team: These patients watched Douyin videos that taught them exactly what was going to happen. The videos showed animations of the surgery, explained how the anesthesia would make them sleep, and even demonstrated how to breathe and move after the operation to feel less pain. It was like getting a detailed map of the ride before you even got on.
2. The Distraction Team: These patients also watched Douyin videos, but they weren't about surgery at all. Instead, they watched beautiful, calming scenes of nature, space, and the ocean. The goal here was to distract their brains, pulling their attention away from the fear of the upcoming surgery and the pain that might follow. Think of it as putting on noise-canceling headphones to block out the scary sounds.
3. The Control Team: These patients got the standard hospital care. They received the usual pamphlets and face-to-face talks from the doctors, but no special Douyin videos.

The Results: A Calmer Mind, A Softer Body

After the surgery, the researchers checked the scores. They used a "State-Trait Anxiety Inventory" (a fancy test for how nervous you feel right now) and pain scales to measure the results.

The findings were pretty clear. The two groups that watched the Douyin videos felt significantly less anxious before the surgery and reported much less pain afterward compared to the Control Team.

• The Anxiety Drop: Before the surgery, the Control Team had an average anxiety score of 56.71. That's a pretty high number! But the Education Team dropped down to 31.54, and the Distraction Team dropped to 33.65. Both video groups were much calmer than the group that just got the standard pamphlets.
• The Pain Relief: When it came to pain after the surgery, the Control Team reported an average pain score of 8.26 on a scale where higher numbers mean more pain. The Education Team felt a 6.34, and the Distraction Team felt a 6.19. Again, the video watchers felt significantly less pain.

The researchers also looked at the types of pain—like the physical "ouch" (sensory) and the emotional "ugh" (affective). Both video methods helped reduce all kinds of pain, not just one type.

Which Method Won?

Here is the twist: The study found that both methods worked incredibly well, and there was no statistically significant difference between them. Whether the patients learned about the surgery or just watched the ocean, they ended up feeling about the same. The Education group didn't beat the Distraction group, and vice versa. They were both winners compared to doing nothing special.

The researchers noted that while the education videos might theoretically be slightly better because they kill two birds with one stone (teaching and calming), the data showed they were essentially tied.

What This Means for the Future

The study concludes that using short videos on apps like Douyin is a powerful tool. It suggests that hospitals could use these videos to help patients feel less scared and hurt less after surgery. The authors recommend that doctors, who are often too busy to give long lectures, could use these videos in the wards to help patients.

However, the paper also admits a few things it couldn't perfectly control. For instance, they didn't track exactly how much pain medication every single patient got during the surgery, which could have influenced the results. Also, they started the videos just 2 hours before the surgery; they suspect that starting the videos even earlier might have made the results even better.

In short, this study suggests that a little bit of scrolling on a phone might be a surprisingly effective way to turn down the volume on fear and pain before a gallbladder surgery. It's a simple, low-cost idea that could make a big difference in how patients experience their hospital stay.