Anxiety scale in surgical abortions and drug induced abortions

A COMPARATIVE STUDY SUMMARY

Anxiety Scale in Surgical Abortions and Drug-induced Abortions: A Comparative Study Summary

In the article “Anxiety Scale in Surgical Abortions and Drug-induced Abortions: A Comparative Study”, the authors - Latifi et al. - sought to find out the anxiety scale prior to an abortion. While the authors cited literature to describe the reasons as to why abortions are performed and how the said abortions result in stressful situations, they pointed out that the levels of anxiety tend to differ. Following the approval of the ethical committee, the authors conducted a cohort study at the University clinical center of Kasovo to determine the anxiety scale, presence of anxiety, type of induced abortion, the average maternal age, and the incidence of abortions. 189 women waiting for abortion were divided into two groups whereby 102 women were designated for induced abortion and 87 for surgical abortion. Hopkins Symptoms Checklist, a screening instrument, was then used to measure the degree of anxiety for the two groups. The degree of anxiety was measured prior to abortion using a scale that ranged between 0 and 1.75.

Results from the cohort study showed that out of the 189 women, 110 of them experienced anxiety in form of different types of phobia. Out of the 110 cases of anxiety, 3 cases were severe anxiety, 21 cases were moderate anxiety, and 86 cases were mild anxiety. Regarding the two groups, the authors found that women who had surgical abortions experienced more anxiety compared to women who had drug-induced abortion. Further, women who had mild anxiety were not treated for anxiety while those with severe and moderate anxiety were treated by a psychiatrist. From the said observations, Latifi et al. predicted that, like many other stressful events in life that lead to anxiety, induced abortion happens to be a risk factor for anxiety disorder. However, most induced abortion-related anxieties have different degrees ranging from mild to severe. Therefore, the authors concluded that since the anxiety scale in induced abortions is often mild, most women do not require interventions to treat their anxiety.