How do Singapore patients view post-anaesthesia adverse outcomes? A single-centre willingness-to-pay study.

INTRODUCTION Knowing how patients value quality of anaesthesia helps anaesthesiologists to customise their service. However, generalising findings from Western population-based willingness-to-pay (WTP) studies across different cultures and societies might overlook several important contextualised understandings of anaesthesia experience for Singapore patients. This study aimed to capture the Singapore perspective of undesired post-anaesthesia outcomes. METHODS 132 patients recruited in the pre-anaesthetic evaluation clinic were given questionnaires describing ten possible post-anaesthetic outcomes to rank for undesirability and assign relative value through proportioning hypothetical SGD 100 to avoid their occurrence. This was analysed with reference to patients' background and anaesthetic history. RESULTS A response rate of 69.1% (n = 132/191) was achieved. Outcomes from the most to least undesirable were: pain; vomiting; nausea; shivering; orodental trauma; sore throat; abrasions; somnolence; and thirst. Comparatively, relative value in descending allocation was: pain; vomiting; nausea; orodental trauma; abrasions; sore throat; shivering; somnolence; and thirst. Results showed strong positive linear correlation between rankings and relative value (r = 0.799, p < 0.01) for the higher-ranking undesired outcomes. However, this was not seen in the fourth to eighth ranked outcomes. CONCLUSION Similar to previous studies in Western populations, pain, vomiting and nausea were the top three adverse outcomes that Singapore patients wished to avoid. However, discrepancies were seen in spending attitudes between Singapore and Western patients, possibly accounted for by differences in healthcare socioeconomics. This study provided better understanding of Singapore patients' perspectives on post-anaesthesia adverse outcomes and could help to better treatment strategy and resource management.