The Mind Prepared: Hypnosis in Surgery
by David Spiegel, MD, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine

Along with an excellent set of references, this article is a very good summary of the state and factors of using hypnosis to reduce the pain and anxiety that cancer patients (or any surgery patient, really) feels. The first study mentioned is a 2007 randomized trial of 200 patients. A quote:

This brief hypnotic preparation was sufficient to produce a statistically significant reduction in the use of propofol and lidocaine; yet despite this, patients in the intervention group reported less pain, nausea, fatigue, discomfort, and emotional upset than did patients in the control group. Doing good also meant doing well, in that the use of hypnosis also resulted in a cost savings of $772.71 per patient, due largely to shorter time in the operating room—an average of 10.6 minutes.

The article goes on to mention the studies and work of Lang and colleagues, who completed a series of earlier studies that showed similar results.

I love TED Talks. If you haven't discovered them yet, you are in for an amazing treat. You can find them at TED.com, on YouTube, and now bundled into like-topic "seasons" on NetFlix.

In this TED talk (see below), the speaker mentions three ways we have had available to change the brain's operation: the therapist's couch, drugs, and the knife. He then says that this way of using real-time brain MRI imaging as the most advanced bio-feedback machine yet created will be the fourth way we can alter the brain's operation and wiring.

I'm guessing he is bundling hypnosis into the 'therapist's couch' method, though that is a bit like bundling swimming into the physical therapist's office. Hypnosis is something anyone can do, even by themselves once they know how. We all visit various levels of trance each day as part of the normal operating of our minds and bodies.

An article in the New York Times talks about hospitals now starting to act on data from years of studies on using hypnosis to help make medical treatment faster, easier, less traumatic and less expensive. Quoting the article:
A study by radiologists at Harvard Medical School, published in 2000, found that patients who received hypnosis during surgery required less medication, had fewer complications and shorter procedures than patients who did not have hypnosis. In a follow-up study in 2002, the radiologists concluded that if every patient undergoing catheterization were to receive hypnosis, the cost savings would amount to $338 per patient.

And:
...hypnosis is now available to patients at some of the most respected medical institutions in the country, including Stanford Hospital, the Cleveland Clinic, Mount Sinai Medical Center and Beth Israel Medical Center in New York.

While the effects are impressive, they are hardly widely known yet.

Science Daily reports, Hypnosis Provides Effective Treatment for Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Study Suggests.

The University of Gothenburg, Sweden, is one of the few but growing number of Universities to undertake hypnosis research. This study was designed with the idea of using hypnosis in ordinary healthcare. The article summaries the success in a recent year-long study as well as follow-ups on two other studies which show outstanding results for long-term effectiveness of hypnosis for IBS.

"The conclusion is that hypnotherapy could reduce both the consumption of healthcare and the cost to society, and that hypnosis therefore belongs in the arsenal of treatments for IBS," to quote Researcher Magnus Simrén.

Oregon Live ran this story about a new technology being used at the Oregon Burn Center at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland: virtual reality hypnosis for dressing changes for burn victims.

Dressing changes are extremely painful but need to done multiple times per day, sometimes for weeks. They are definitely the "sore spot" in burn care, elevating the stress and tension in patients that slows healing and has patients thinking of ways to avoid it, bringing on compliance problems.

Patients are distracted by flying and performing tasks using a computer mouse in an immersive virtual world called SnowWorld with hypnotic scenery, music and pacing.

Patterson's group has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health for a controlled clinical trial of virtual reality hypnosis for chronic pain.

Read the story of Randy McAllister, a patient that has used the technology, in the Oregon Live article.

We've certainly come a long way. Or have we? Ever wonder what basic tenants of hypnosis are the same as they were a century ago? Can you spot hypnosis disguised as other "miracle modalities" from the nineteenth century? Are you able to discuss the development of hypnosis through the decades, what they had plain "wrong" back when, and why the modern shifts in models and techniques are more effective?

If these kinds of questions have ever crossed your mind, and if you have a few minutes until your next client appointment, you might want to check out all of the free ebooks on Hypnosis available on Google Books. You can read them on your desktop, laptop, and now also on your iPad or phone using the Google Books app.

http://books.google.com/ebooks?q=hypnosis&as_brr=4

Explore centuries of hypnosis literature, discover where some of the most persistent (and annoying) myths about hypnosis originated, and brush up on your fodder for sparkling party conversations by browsing scores of books dating from the early 1800's through the 1970's. Newer titles are available for purchase as ebooks, too.

WTSP News in Tampa Bay, FL has done a couple of stories on the success of hynobirthing. Probably because their own TV reporter Heather VanNest was quite impressed when she used hypnosis for the birth of her child. She wrote a blog post about it here:

http://www.wtsp.com/feature/naturalhealth/article/190304/177/HEATHERS-BL...
(with video)

People seem to remember when the stars, models and public figures do things, and perhaps that's why people are impessed that actress Jessica Alba and Victoria Secret model Miranda Kerr (married to Orlando Bloom) both used hypnosis for a medication-free birth. WTSP story here:

http://www.wtsp.com/news/health/article/205032/12/Victoria-Secret-model-...

The San Jose Mercury news ran an article about San Francisco Giant's Bruce Bochy using hypnosis to quit his longtime addiction to chewing tobacco, with some comments about the process and mystery of it all.

http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_18639348 -- (Aug 8, 2011)

Quotes from the article:

"I'm a believer," said Murphy, who joined the Giants as a bat boy when the franchise moved West in 1958.

"It's been the best $300 I ever spent," Hayes said. "It's weird to see how it works." (Hayes also quit chewing via hypnosis)

Bochy agrees. He already would have spent well more than $300 on dip by this point in the season, he said.

These were one-session successes, though long sessions (3.5 hrs), by medical hypnotherapist Dr. AlVera Paxson, who lives in Scottsdale, AZ. ( http://medical-hypnotherapy.com/ )

The story was on the AP News wire and carried in several other publications.

CBS News has added a nice 10-photo gallery of a patient undergoing thyroid surgery using hypnosis instead of a general anesthetic.

It's wonderful to see mass-media mentioning hypnosis, especially in such useful and close proximity to doctors and hospitals. It's also sobering to see the minimal commitment that is often made to hypnosis. This nice gallery of photos is quick to mention that "if the patient ever feels any pain, they are immediately given a shot," and "hypnosis is used only in low-risk operations that are also using local anesthetic". It fails to mention, for example, that hypnosis has been a life-saving alternative for even major surgeries in cases where general anesthetic could not be used.

One doctor is quoted as saying, "If we could get more research on the right patient groups that would benefit from (hypnosis), that would be wonderful."

Last week (Jan 4), the Better Business Bureau released its list of the top ten most common scams of 2010.