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Hypnosis Before Breast Cancer Surgery Means Less Pain Afterwards: Study

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 August 2007, 18:20 CDT

By SHERYL UBELACKER

TORONTO (CP) - Women who undergo hypnosis just before breast cancer surgery need less anesthetic and experience lower levels of pain and other side-effects following the operation, a study has found.

The U.S. study also found that patients who had a hypnosis session with a psychologist an hour before surgery spent less time in the O.R. - about 11 minutes, on average - resulting in significant cost savings, mainly due to reduced operating time.

"Breast cancer patients are a population in need," lead author Guy Montgomery, a clinical psychologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, said Tuesday from New York. "They're going through a lot both from a psychological perspective as well as a physical perspective from the surgery itself."

"Our patients at discharge had less pain intensity, less pain unpleasantness, less nausea, less fatigue, less discomfort and they were less emotionally upset about the whole experience," Montgomery said of those who were hypnotized.

To conduct the study, published online Tuesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 200 women scheduled for surgical breast biopsy or lumpectomy were randomly assigned to have either a 15-minute session of hypnosis or a short period of empathic listening with a psychologist.

Those assigned to hypnosis were first reassured about the so-called mesmerizing technique, with psychologists debunking myths about hypnosis popularized in movies and television, said Montgomery, director of the Integrative Behavioural Medicine Program at Mount Sinai.

"We answer any patient questions and the typical 'Will I cluck like a chicken?"' he said laughing. "We explain that hypnosis is not mind control, you're not going to be asked to do anything embarrassing. It's not like taking a powerful drug that leaves you zonked out."

"It's more like focused attention, focused concentration, where you're able to let yourself relax and you're the person in charge."

Each woman was asked to close her eyes and imagine herself in a special place, perhaps lying on a beach on a warm summer day. The psychologist then directed the patient to become deeply relaxed. Once hypnotized, suggestions were made specifically related to recovery from surgery.

"So we say: 'You might experience some pain after surgery, but your special place will protect you and . . . it will hardly bother you,"' Montgomery said.

"We do tell the patient this is not magic. It's not like we're going to make 100 per cent of everyone's pain go away. But rather it's a way to reduce your pain. So if your pain might have been an eight (on a sale of zero to one), we want to get it to a four."

Researchers found that because those in the hypnotism group experienced reduced side-effects, they spent less time in hospital recovering, while less time in the operating room resulted in an average saving to a hospital of US$773 per patient.

"The most important point is this is an easy thing we can do for patients, it saves institutions money, so basically it's a win-win," he said. "We can reduce side-effects of surgery without using basically any health-care dollar resources. It pays for itself."

Dr. David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford University School of Medicine in California, said the "impressive study" builds on other research that has shown the pain-modulating potential of hypnosis.

In an editorial accompanying the study, he said neurological studies have demonstrated that hypnosis actually alters the perception of pain, rather than merely a person's response to the pain.

"It has taken us a century and a half to rediscover the fact that the mind has something to do with pain and can be a powerful tool in controlling it," writes Spiegel. "It is now abundantly clear that we can retrain the brain to reduce pain: 'float rather than fight."'

Montgomery said he would like to test hypnosis on men having prostate surgery and on patients slated for other operations. He'd also like to see it become standard practice in hospitals.

"Hypnosis is easy to use. It can be administered briefly. It's a practical intervention that we can use with everything else that's going on in the surgical clinics . . . It's something in addition that has no side-effects that makes people feel better and you can do it in about 15 minutes."

Source: Canadian Press

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