Background: Anxiety prior to caesarean section can lead to a negative birth experience, which may affect different aspects of woman's life in the long term. Improving preoperative information may result in lower anxiety leading to a more positive birth experience. Thus, we aimed to evaluate the impact of informational video before planned caesarean delivery on maternal anxiety and satisfaction.
Methods: Four different databases were searched from inception till March 2023. We selected randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that compared educational or informative videos about the aspects of the expected caesarean delivery process versus no preoperative information in the control group. No language restrictions were imposed. We used Revman software during performing our meta-analysis. Our main outcomes were preoperative and postoperative anxiety as well as maternal satisfaction post-procedure.
Results: Six RCTs were retrieved with a total number of 702 patients. Informative video significantly reduced the anxiety level before caesarean delivery in comparison with the control group (MD = -4.21, 95% CI [-5.46, -2.95], p<0001). Moreover, the postoperative anxiety level was significantly improved in the informational video group (MD = -4.71, 95% CI [-7.06, -2.36], p<0001). In addition, there was a significant improvement in maternal satisfaction score after caesarean delivery among the informational video group (p = 0.001).
Conclusions: Informational video prior to caesarean delivery decreases preoperative and postoperative anxiety levels with improvement in maternal post-procedure satisfaction. However, the existing evidence is limited by several shortcomings, chiefly small sample size. More trials with larger sample size are required to confirm our findings.
Keywords: Informational video; anxiety; cesarean; educational video; satisfaction.