Hypnosis May Reduce Pain in Surgery

By EMMA ROSS, AP Medical Writer

LONDON (AP) - People who were hypnotized while undergoing surgery without a general anesthetic needed less pain medication, left the operating room sooner and had more stable vital signs than those who were not, according to a study in this week's issue of The Lancet medical journal.

Trance states have been used for hundreds of years by both witch doctors and modern surgeons to help sick people. But there had been little scientific evidence that hypnosis really works to reduce pain during surgery.

``Despite how long hypnosis as been around and the dramatic effects it has shown, there are very few properly designed clinical studies that demonstrate that it is more than a placebo,'' said David R. Patterson, professor of rehabilitation medicine, surgery and psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was not connected with the study.

``This really solidifies the evidence,'' he said. ``For acute pain ... it's not arguable any more.''

The study, led by Dr. Elvira Lang of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, involved 241 people of similar health and age who had operations to open clogged arteries and veins, relieve blockages in the kidney drainage system or block blood vessels feeding tumors.

The patients were divided into three groups - one that experienced normal interactions with doctors and nurses, another that received extra attention from an additional person in the operating room who made sure nobody said anything negative and a third who were helped to hypnotize themselves.

All the patients were able to give themselves as much pain medication as they wanted through an intravenous tube.

The hypnosis group - who were guided through visualizations of scenarios they found pleasant - fared best, but the patients receiving extra attention also benefited.

About half the patients in those two groups needed no drugs at all, while the rest gave themselves only half the amount of medication as those undergoing the operation with no special attention.

The hypnotized patients were the only ones who said the pain did not get worse as the surgery progressed. They also had fewer problems with their blood pressure and heart rate during the operation.

Their operations also finished 17 minutes earlier than those conducted without the patients receiving special attention.

Lang suggested that time was saved in these operations because the surgeon's attention was diverted less often by events such as the patient being oversedated, unstable blood pressure or vomiting.

``A lot of people have talked about it, but no one's going to take hypnosis seriously in this arena unless it's shown to work,'' said Michael Nash, editor of the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. ``This is a breakthrough study that moves beyond mere anecdote and actually demonstrates not only a benefit but also a cost saving.''

Dr. Marie-Elisabeth Faymonville, an anesthesiologist at the University of Liege in Belgium who has conducted similar research, said she did not consider the new study to be groundbreaking.

But she added that as the largest study to date on the issue, it provides important confirmation of the benefit of hypnosis in surgery.

The study was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.