RSNA: Hypnosis Reduces Breast Biopsy Pain and Anxiety
CHICAGO -- Hypnosis during a breast biopsy significantly reduces post-procedure pain and anxiety compared with standard care, investigators reported here.
CHICAGO, Nov. 30 -- Hypnosis during a breast biopsy significantly reduced post-procedure pain and anxiety compared with standard care, investigators reported here.
Women who were randomized to the hypnosis intervention said they experienced less post-operative pain (P=0.0024), reported Elvira Lang, M.D., an associate professor of radiology at Harvard, at the Radiological Society of North America meeting.
Compared with baseline scores, women in the standard care arm had significantly higher anxiety scores (P
The median cost for doing a large core biopsy among the standard care patients amounted to ; the average cost among the empathy patients was . The cost for the hypnotherapy patients was .
That cost was reduced to .50 if there was someone on the biopsy team that could perform the task of doing the hypnosis.
Dr. Lang did not perform statistical analyses on the time and costs.
The hypnosis script used by Dr. Lang can be found online in Pain Volume 126, issues 1-3, 15 Dec. 2006, pages 155-164
