Hypnosis helps the healing process after surgery
In Belgium, anesthesiologists who used a combination of hypnosis and local anesthesia, vs. only general anesthesia, found that patients’ opioid drug use was greatly diminished, as well as time spent in the recovery room and the length of their hospital stay.
The hypnosis was performed on breast cancer and thyroid patients. ”In all of these procedures local anaesthesia is feasible but not, on its own, sufficient to ensure patient comfort,” says Professor Roelants from the Department of Anaesthesiology at the Cliniques Universitaires St. Luc, UCL, Brussels, Belgium.
“In addition to reducing drug use and hospital stay time, being able to avoid general anaesthesia in breast cancer surgery is important because we know that local anaesthesia can block the body’s stress response to surgery and could therefore reduce the possible spread of metastases,” said Professor Roelants.
The anesthesiologists use eye fixation, progressive muscle relaxation, or the retrieval of a pleasant memory to focus a patient’s attention on one particular point, enabling a modified state of consciousness, with a different perception of the world.
“There is still a lot of debate around the exact mechanism that allows hypnosis to reduce pain perception,” said Professor Roelants,” but what it absolutely clear is that it does so. The result is that one third of thyroidectomies and a quarter of all breast cancer surgery carried out at the UCL hospital are performed under local anaesthetic with the patient under hypnosis.”
The anesthesiologists have confirmed that, regardless of sex or age, and if the patient is motivated, ready to co-operate, and trusts the doctors, hypnosis will work. It can also be applied to surgical patients who undergo carotid artery surgery, inguinal hernia, knee arthroscopy, gynaecological surgery, ophthalmology, ear nose and throat, plastic surgery and egg retrieval for fertility treatment.
The research findings were presented June 12, 2011 at the European Anaesthesiology Congress in Amsterdam.
