CHICAGO - Hypnotic relaxation techniques not only reduce patient anxiety and pain during interventional procedures, but can also reduce costs, according to a Harvard Medical School radiologist.
The study, co-authored by Dr. Elvira Lang, associate professor of radiology and medicine at Harvard and chief of cardiovascular and interventional radiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, compared the cost of intravenous conscious sedation with adjunct self-hypnotic relaxation during outpatient procedures.
Lang discussed the results at an RSNA press conference Wednesday. Her study will be in a cardiovascular scientific session on Thursday Dec. 2 at 11:33 a.m. in room E353C.
In a prospective randomized study, 79 patients received IV conscious sedation and 82 underwent additional self-hypnotic relaxation during angiography, angioplasty or kidney drainage. Hypnosis is induced by nurses using a pre-written script, Lang said. The nurses involved in the study attended 32 hours of hypnotherapy workshops as well as supervised, in-house training sessions.
The hypnosis reduced the average cost of IV conscious sedation from $553 to $423, the authors concluded. The cost savings were realized mainly through a reduction in oversedation requiring overnight admission. Forty-six percent of the patients who used relaxation techniques did not require conscious sedation.
In addition, self-hypnotic relaxation provided better analgesia and anxiolysis, and was associated with fewer hemodynamic disturbances resulting in less demand on hospital personnel time. Procedure time was also reduced by 17 minutes per patient.
At Lang's institution, where she estimated some 2,000 interventional procedures are performed each year, up to $250,000 in annual savings could be achieved with hypnotic relaxation.
Lang, who has been using self-hypnosis for ten years, added that patients are very responsive to the technique.
"We explain that self-relaxation is like reading a book or watching a movie. A person is absorbed by the movie and doesn't really notice what's going on around them. That is a hypnotic experience," she said.
By Shalmali PalAuntMinnie.com staff writer
December 2, 1999
