The quantitative assessment of premedication.

It is now widely accepted that one of the principal functions of premedication is the relief of anxiety in the pre-operative period. This being so, the main problem in quantifying the effects of premedication is the measurement of pre-operative anxiety or the extent to which this has been allayed by premedicant drugs. The measurement of anxiety is a subject which concerns not only the anaesthetist but also the psychiatrist, the pharmacologist and the psychophysiologist. There are, therefore, many established methods of measuring and quantifying anxiety documented in the literature of each of these specialties and it is die purpose of this paper to consider their applications and limitations, particularly in the clinical evaluation of premedicant drugs.