[Anxiety in patients undergoing fast-track knee arthroplasty in the light of recent literature].

The rapid progress in knee implants technology and operational techniques go together with more and more modem medical programs, designed to optimize the patients' care and shorten their stay in hospital. However, this does not guarantee any elimination ofperioperative stress in patients. Anxiety is a negative emotional state arising from stressful circumstances accompanied by activation of the autonomous nervous system. Anxiety causes negative physiological changes, including wound healing, resistance to anesthetic induction, it is associated with an increased perioperative pain and prolong recovery period. The purpose of this work is to present the current state of knowledge on the preoperative anxiety and discuss its impact on pain and other parameters in patients undergoing fast-track arthroplasty of big joints. The work also shows selected issues of anxiety pathomechanism, and actual methods reducing preoperative anxiety in hospitalized patients. The common prevalence of anxiety in patients undergoing surgery induces the attempt to routinely identify patients with higher anxiety, which may be a predictive factor of worse results after TKA. Undertaking widely understood psychological support in these patients before and after the operation could be a favorable element, which would influence thefinal result of the treatment of patients after big joints arthroplasties.