Hypnotic Anaesthesia

History

Perhaps the most extreme example of the use of hypnosis for pain control is its use in surgical operations in place of anaesthesia. For people who are allergic to anaesthetics or extremely frail (see key note ... right), hypnosis can have an important role to play in enabling them to undergo surgery without pain.

The use of hypnosis in surgery dates back to the days before anaesthetics. The first documented case in 1829 is of a mastectomy performed by Jules Cloquet in France, and Dr. James Esdaile, a Scottish surgeon working in India, used mesmerism in hundreds of operations. Later, hypnoanaesthesia was used in the earliest open-heart surgeries, since general anaesthesia was considered to carry too great a risk for such critically ill patients. However. one of the hardest tasks can be convincing a surgeon to allow hypnosis in an operating theatre. The state of hypnosis in which facilitates operation in this way is now known as the "Esdaile State".

Today

Today only a handful of Hypnotherapists offer this technique. Some therapists claim that only 10 per cent of the population are actually capable of achieving the very deep levels of hypnosis which are required for surgery although many hypnotherapists will teach Hypnobirthing as a move to more natural childbirth. This claim is based on research which is now questionable and more recent work shows that the Esdaile State can be achieved in very much more than 10%.

Preparing for surgery

Successful analgesia is achieved through training. The best way to achieve this is to allow a sufficient number of training sessions. Clients taught some different techniques for pain removal, such as glove anaesthesia, or the alteration of pain into another form of sensory perception, such as "pressure" or "warmth".

First, they are taught to control pain in small areas of their body, and once they are proficient in this they move on to control larger areas. Therapists satisfy themselves that clients are ready for surgery by testing the client with painful stimuli, such as needles, to see whether they react. The advantages of using this kind of hypnosis in surgery include decreased anxiety and fear before the operation on the part of the patient, no toxic side effects, and beneficial effects on post-operative pain, discomfort, and lack of nausea. The disadvantages are that the technique takes time to learn and you may not be able to arrange to have a therapist present during the surgery.