Hypervigilance as Predictor of Postoperative Acute Pain: Its Predictive Potency Compared With Experimental Pain Sensitivity, Cortisol Reactivity, and Affective State

Abstract

Hypervigilance proved to be a powerful predictor of subjective acute postoperative pain, but was less useful with regard to the amount of requested analgesics. The overlap with other psychologic predictors (affective state, experimental pain sensitivity, and cortisol reactivity) is sufficiently small to consider hypervigilance a promising supplement in psychologic predictor research.