Hypnosis or A General Anaesthetic, Madam?

Could you imagine undergoing surgery using hypnosis instead of anaesthetic?  Could you imagine someone with a fear of surgery allowing a hypnotherapist to accompany her into the operating theatre for a breast cancer operation?

Probably not, but that’s exactly what happened to 46 year old Pippa Plaisted.  Instead of anaesthetic or any kind of pain killers, Pippa had hypnotherapist Charles Montagu holding his thumb on her forehead, carefully monitoring her hypnotic state.  In the past, drugs had given her feelings of dizziness for months but not this time.

“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.”

Pippa’s case may sound unusual but she is by no means alone.  In the 19th century, hypnosis was routinely used for operations but with the advance of modern medicine this was phased out.

In Belgium, thousands of successful operations take place every year using a combination of low-dosage painkilling drugs and hypnosis.  Marie-Elisabeth Faymonville, an anaesthesiologist at the head of the team at Liege Hospital in Belgium, has noted the benefits of this ‘hypno-sedation.’  Patients bleed less, a huge advantage in operations such as nose or breast operations.  One theory behind this is that general anaesthesia stops the blood cells from reacting to the incision.  In addition, when under general anaesthetic, the patient has to breathe through a respirator, which puts pressure on the chest and increases bleeding.

General anaesthetic is sometimes preferred simply because the patients do not want to be awake, whereas up to a third of these operations could be done under a local anaesthetic.  However, Faymonville points out that the long-term repercussions are still unknown.  Some studies indicate that using general anaesthetic may increase the chances of developing certain diseases later in life, such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, and that some anaesthetics inhibit the immune system, even destroying white blood cells, for days after surgery.

Hypno-surgery has other benefits too.  The extra time taken with the patients is more than covered by the savings made in using fewer anaesthetics.  Due to less inflammation, recovery time is often faster, sometimes by up to 70 per cent.  As patients are conscious they can even cooperate with the surgeon.  For example, when performing eyelid cosmetic surgery, the adjustments need to be just right to ensure that the patient can open and close their eyes properly.  When the patient is conscious, the surgeon is able to ask the patient to check the eyelid movement.

Some people believe the hypnosis adds nothing to the surgery.  The pain is only felt when the skin is cut and so, when given a local anaesthetic rather than a general, it is not surprising that the patient should feel no pain.  When cut in the correct manner, the incision of internal organs gives no pain anyway.

Many surgeons and anaesthetists are reluctant to embrace hypnosis, citing that there are not enough studies or research to support it.  However, when studies are done, it is difficult to get them published in the most popular surgical journals.  Surprisingly, a high number of patients seem to welcome the idea. 

For more information, The New Scientist published a detailed article on using hypnosis in surgery and for pain manipulation, which you can read online.