Women who received a brief hypnosis intervention before breast cancer surgery spent less time in the operating room and reported significantly less pain and discomfort after surgery than women who did not undergo hypnosis, reports a study published in the September 5 JNCI.

Investigators at Mount Sinai School of Medicine randomly assigned 200 women scheduled to undergo surgical breast biopsy or lumpectomy to either a hypnosis group or a control group. Women in the hypnosis group received a scripted 15-minute hypnosis session within 1 hour of surgery… Women in the control group spent an equal amount of time with the psychologists within an hour of surgery to talk and receive emotional support.

Because the women knew their group assignment, the investigators took several precautions to reduce potential bias, including blinding anesthesiologists and surgeons to the group assignments and using research assistants unaware of the group assignments to collect the women's perception of pain and discomfort.

Women in the hypnosis group required significantly less of the anesthetic propofol and the analgesic lidocaine, the doses of which are adjusted for individual patients during surgery. Although use of pain medication after surgery did not differ between groups, women in the hypnosis group reported significantly less pain intensity, pain unpleasantness, nausea, fatigue, discomfort, and emotional upset.

Women in the hypnosis group also spent about 10 and a half fewer minutes in surgery. On average, the surgical procedures cost about $770 less per patient in the hypnosis group, mostly due to reduced time in surgery.

Source: www.cancer.gov