The psychological care of patients before and after surgical intervention is a component of quality of life. We observed that anxiety and/or depression frequently appears at surgical patients and, also, in their relatives. If psychological symptoms are correlated to the biological status of the surgical patients, for their relatives emotional stress is linked to patient's somatic and psychological status.

To highlight the role of emotional stress associated to anesthetic surgical stress for the increase of the defense reaction of the organism.

37 patients and 10 relatives completed the Hamilton Scales for Depression and Anxiety. Relatives also answered an open questionnaire to explore the perceived impact of plastic surgery on their own lives.

Patients’ relatives reported more troubling and life-altering experiences than the patients and scores for anxiety were higher.

The generalization of our results is still limited by the small number of participants in this study. However, it seems that psychological needs of relatives are equal or greater than that of the patients. Scores on Hamilton Anxiety Scale don’t seem correlated to Total Antioxidant Response (TAR), but are influenced by diet; for this reason, it is useful to add synthetic exogenous antioxidants (not only natural ones) to the diet of anxious surgical patients.