| Public release date: 4-Apr-2006
You will feel nothing: Hypnosis meets surgery
By Daniel Elkan
Copyright © 2006 AP Wire
As the surgeon's knife cut into her chest, Pippa Plaisted, 46, should have been in agony. The 45-minute breast cancer operation she was undergoing at Lister Hospital, London, would normally have needed a general anesthetic.
But Plaisted hadn't been anesthetized, nor given painkilling drugs of any sort.
Instead, hypnotherapist Charles Montigue stood at the operating table, his thumb resting on Plaisted's forehead, monitoring the hypnotic trance he'd put her in minutes before surgery began. Eyes closed but awake, Plaisted could hear the surgeon calmly telling her, at each stage of the operation, what was going to happen next.
Plaisted had already used hypnotherapy to help overcome her fear of operations but had never tried it during surgery. It seemed a daring thing to do, but she was desperate to avoid conventional anesthetics. She'd had a series of operations, and after each one the drugs had left her feeling dizzy for months.
Astonishingly, the hypnosis succeeded in making her operation entirely pain-free.
"The surgeon was cutting and sewing inside me, but I could not feel any sensation at all," Plaisted recalls. "After the operation, I felt tired, but there was no nausea or wooziness. I had a clear head and felt totally normal."
For most people, the idea of undergoing major surgery while conscious seems unthinkable, but Plaisted's use of hypnosis is no one-off. In Liege Hospital, Belgium, anesthetists routinely use a procedure that they call "hypnosedation." They've found that when combined with local anesthetic and much-reduced amounts of other analgesic drugs, medical hypnosis is an effective alternative to general anesthesia. So far, the Liege team has used this technique in over 4,800 major and minor operations. Now, other hospital departments are beginning to follow suit.
Given the advances in pharmacological anesthetics in recent years, it seems odd that anesthetists should even think of using hypnosis. During the 19th century, hypnosis was reportedly used as an anesthetic in several hundred operations. However, with the discovery of chemical anesthetics, such as nitrous oxide and chloroform, the practice fell into disuse.
Comfortably numb
General anesthetics are often used simply because the patient would prefer to be unconscious during the operation. Anesthesiologist Lee Fleisher, of the University of Pennsylvania, estimates about a third of operations done under general anesthesia could actually be done under local.
Meanwhile, the Liege team are discovering that hypnosedation has some remarkable benefits. For a start, patients bleed less. This makes surgery easier to perform, particularly nose or breast operations, where incisions often lead to copious bleeding.
Neuroscientists are only just beginning to understand how hypnosis can reduce sensations of pain. Whatever the mechanisms behind it, could hypnosis replace a significant number of the 100 million general anesthetics given worldwide each year? Sceptics point out that only a small proportion of people are easily hypnotized, making it largely impractical.
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