The idea of hypnotising people while they have surgery may sound like a medical stunt, but it is now standard practice in hospitals in several countries.
Earlier this month, the UK’s (RCoA) called for more healthcare staff to give people self-hypnosis recordings to listen to before a procedure, – a short and long version spoken by a man or a woman – alongside the .
Hypnosis is also being used in some hospitals in the US, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands.
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The cases of surgical hypnosis that get the most attention involve someone having a major operation without any anaesthetic, but the number of people who could be hypnotised this deeply is thought to be small, making such an approach impractical on a large scale.
What is more widely applicable is for doctors to use hypnosis on top of anaesthetic drugs to help people feel less anxious when having procedures that they remain awake through, such as biopsies or colonoscopies. This can then lower the amount of sedatives or pain medications that need to be given. A randomised trial in US women who had a tissue sample taken from a breast lump .
This approach could also be used before surgeries that require people to be put to sleep with a general anaesthetic. One trial looked at children having a procedure where a catheter is pushed into their heart, which requires a general anaesthetic. Those who listened to a nurse reading from a hypnosis script .
“It’s not an alternative to anaesthesia, it’s an adjunct, for managing preoperative anxiety,” says , an anaesthetist who helped develop the RCoA’s recordings.
As well as listening to hypnosis recordings or to a health professional reading from a script, staff can also use more informal “hypnotic suggestions” where they drop key phrases into the conversation to help people relax, for example by telling them that they can feel themselves becoming sleepy or that their limbs are becoming heavy.
At a conference on “adjunctive medical hypnosis” held at the in London earlier this month, Black said people should also be advised to listen to the recordings several times at home before their procedure takes place. “Sometimes, patients can wait a couple of hours for their operations,” she says. “It’s very hard to relax in that kind of environment.”
There are no records showing how often anaesthetists or other staff are actually using these recommended hypnotic techniques, says Black. It isn’t part of standard medical training for doctors learning to be anaesthetists, but hospitals and doctors’ professional bodies in many countries are increasingly providing training sessions in hypnotic techniques. “It needs to become integrated into the medical school curriculum,” says Black.
, a former radiologist who was involved in both trials, has set up a company called based in Boston, Massachusetts, that provides hypnosis training to medical staff. In February, she advised the Dutch national breast cancer screening service how to use hypnosis to make mammograms less painful. “If it is less painful, women are more likely to come back,” she says.
, an anaesthetist at Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide, Australia, says that even doctors who aren’t using formal hypnosis scripts can reduce people’s pain and anxiety by avoiding language that gives negative suggestions.
For instance, instead of warning someone that an injection is going to sting, doctors could say they are going to give something that provides a numbing sensation. “By giving negative suggestions, we are harming patients inadvertently,” he says.
