• Posted January 12, 2026

Headed For Surgery? Try To Lower Your Stress Levels, Study Suggests

Are you facing upcoming surgery?

One of the best ways to prepare is to de-stress, a new study says.

People who are stressed out prior to surgery appear to suffer more pain afterward and take longer to recover, researchers report in the January issue of the journal Anesthesiology.

Even modest levels of stress can affect recovery, researchers said.

More than 40% of seniors preparing for major surgery reported moderate to high levels of stress, similar to those seen in patients with advanced cancer, researchers found.

A patient’s surgical team could help them do better by assessing their stress prior to an operation, and offering different ways to relieve it, the team said.

“As the anesthesiologist, I have things I’m responsible for  to keep a patient safe, but patients have their own concerns too,” senior researcher Dr. Leah Acker said in a news release. She’s an anesthesiologist at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina.

For the new study, researchers used a digital questionnaire to take three-minute readings of 132 patients’ stress levels between November 2022 and February 2024.

“The survey takes just minutes and gives us a window into what matters most to them, so we can tailor conversations or simple interventions that can make a difference,” Acker said.

Patients’ most common concerns included changes in sleep and appetite, communication with health care providers and family responsibilities.

In an open-ended comment section, patients wrote in worries about finances, home repairs, loss of independence and the state of the nation, as well as keeping up with activities that bring them joy and meaning, like traveling, concerts and golf.

Interestingly, the number of worries a person carries into the operating room appears to matter more than the intensity of their stress, researchers found.

Acker described these patients as “overwhelmed,” with many small pressures accumulating to hinder their recovery.

Patients with higher numbers of stresses were more likely to stay in the hospital longer following surgery and feel more postoperative pain. They also had a higher risk for delirium following their operation, researchers found.

A patient’s odds of delirium increased by 19% for each additional stressor, the study found.

Delirium — a sudden state of confusion — is one of the most serious post-operative complications for seniors, researchers said. It increases the cost of their hospital care and increases their long-term risk of dementia.

Overwhelmed patients might exhaust themselves prior to surgery by trying to address every single worry that’s on their mind, researchers said. That could affect their sleep, and poor sleep has been linked to greater pain levels.

Acker said future studies could figure out whether certain specific sources of stress more strongly influence surgery outcomes, and whether surgical teams might be able to help patients by tackling their stress prior to the day of operation.

More information

The American Heart Association has more on how stress affects the body.

SOURCE: Duke University, news release, Jan. 4, 2026