The American journal of clinical hypnosis
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study Clinical Trial
Can medical hypnosis accelerate post-surgical wound healing? Results of a clinical trial.
Although medical hypnosis has a long history of myriad functional applications (pain reduction, procedural preparation etc.), it has been little tested for site-specific effects on physical healing per se. In this randomized controlled trial, we compared the relative efficacy of an adjunctive hypnotic intervention, supportive attention, and usual care only on early post-surgical wound healing. Eighteen healthy women presenting consecutively for medically recommended reduction mammaplasty at an ambulatory surgery practice underwent the same surgical protocol and postoperative care following preoperative randomization (n = 6 each) to one of the three treatment conditions: usual care, 8 adjunctive supportive attention sessions, or 8 adjunctive hypnosis sessions targeting accelerated wound healing. ⋯ In addition, at both the 1 and 7 week post-surgical observation intervals, one-way analyses showed the hypnosis group to be significantly more healed than the usual care controls, p < 0.02. The mean scores of the subjective assessments of postoperative pain, incision healing and functional recovery trended similarly. Results of this preliminary trial indicate that use of a targeted hypnotic intervention can accelerate postoperative wound healing and suggest that further tests of using hypnosis to augment physical healing are warranted.