Brief presurgery hypnosis reduces distress and pain in excisional breast biopsy patients.
Each year, hundreds of thousands of women undergo excisional breast biopsies for definitive diagnosis. Not only do these patients experience pain associated with the procedure, but they also endure distress associated with the threat of cancer. Hypnosis has been demonstrated as effective for controlling patients' pain in other surgical settings, but breast surgery patients have received little attention. To determine the impact of brief presurgical hypnosis on these patients' postsurgery pain and distress and to explore possible mediating mechanisms of these effects, 20 excisional breast biopsy patients were randomly assigned to a hypnosis or control group (standard care). Hypnosis reduced postsurgery pain and distress. Initial evidence suggested that the effects of hypnosis were mediated by presurgery expectations.
Montgomery
Guy H
GH
Ruttenberg Cancer Center, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY 10029-6574, USA. guy.montgomery@mssm.edu
Weltz
Christina R
CR
Seltz
Megan
M
Bovbjerg
Dana H
DH
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001143:Arousal; D001706:Biopsy / Q000523:psychology*; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006991:Hypnosis, Anesthetic; D008875:Middle Aged; D010147:Pain Measurement; D010149:Postoperative Pain / Q000523:psychology*; D013404:Suggestion; D016896:Treatment Outcome