Assessment of Cardiac Anxiety
In the preoperative period and at hospital discharge, all patients answered a cardiac anxiety questionnaire in a version validated for Portuguese by Sardinha et al.10 applied by a blind examiner regarding the allocation process of the groups. This scale has 18 items, distributed in two domains - fear and hypervigilance and avoidance, with responses ranging from 0 (never) to 4 (always). Higher scores reflect greater cardiac anxiety.