Hypnosis more effective in handling breast cancer pain.

Reuters reports that in a randomized clinical trial at Mount Sinai School of medicine, "one hour prior to breast cancer surgery, 100 women underwent hypnosis for 15 minutes and the rest had 15 minutes of counseling with a psychologist.

Those who received hypnosis needed less anesthesia during the operation, reported less pain afterward and their procedures took less time. They spent 11 minutes less in surgery, amounting to $773 per patient in reduced surgical costs, according to the study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute."

Or, in the words of the authors of the study, which was published online by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (subscription req'd):

"...hypnosis intervention appears to be one of the rare clinical interventions that can simultaneously reduce both symptom burden and costs. Patients are likely to benefit from less time in surgery and reduced use of sedatives because patients undergoing longer surgical procedures with more sedatives tend to have greater nausea and pain following surgery and tend to recover more slowly..."

Emphasis added