[Anxiety as a state and anxiety as a personality trait in patients with diseases of the abdominal organs before and following operation].

63 persons were examined by means of psychologic methods: 32 patients with surgical diseases of the abdomen and 30 healthy people. The results show that an increase of the level of anxiety as an emotional state is mostly caused by the somatic disease and situations connected with it. After operation, a statistically relevant regression of the results will occur in this scale. In the preoperative period the whole population of patients is characterized by an emotional lack of balance, viz. tendency to autoaggression and neurotic anxiety. In the post-operative period there was no decrease in all factors constituting the hypothetical sources of anxiety. In studies of surgical patients it is important to differentiate anxiety as a state and anxiety as a personal feature.