Breast Cancer Pain Reduced By Hypnosis

Hypnosis prior to breast cancer surgery reduced the amount of anesthesia administered during the operation and pain afterward, a U.S. study found.

Guy Montgomery of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and colleagues conducted a clinical trial to examine the effects of hypnosis when it is given within 1 hour before breast cancer surgery.

Two hundred women were randomly assigned to either 15 minutes of hypnosis by a psychologist or a control session in which they spoke with a psychologist.

The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found patients in the hypnosis group required less anesthesia than patients in the control group and they reported less pain, nausea, fatigue, discomfort and emotional upset after surgery.

The hypnosis patients spent less time in surgery — almost 11 minutes less — and their surgical costs were reduced by about $773 per patient, mainly due to the time savings of having fewer complications.

Together, the combination of potential improvements in symptom burden for the hundreds of thousands of women facing breast cancer surgery each year and the economic benefit for institutions argues persuasively for the more widespread application of brief presurgical hypnosis, the study said.