Hypnosis, an effective strategy to prepare children to anesthesia

A hypnosis help relieve seems in children, anxiety manifested in the moments before a surgical procedure performed under general anesthesia, suggest the results of a French study published in the specialized "Pediatric Anesthesia" magazine.
The products most often used for premedication, which is to give the person who will be made a drug that the calm and potentiate the effect of anesthetics by offsetting their side-effects are benzodiazepines, drugs with anxiolytic and sedative properties .

In children, this step aims to facilitate separation from parents to reduce preoperative anxiety, to facilitate the induction of anesthesia (putting the mask delivering anesthetic gases or injected anesthetics) and reduce the risk postoperative behavioral disorders (nightmares, bedwetting, eating disorders ...), remember Dr. Eric Wodey and colleagues of anesthesia and surgical ICU of University Hospital of Rennes.

French doctors have therefore wanted to test the efficacy of premedication with hypnosis on these parameters, comparing the effects of premedication with a benzodiazepine. A total of 50 young candidates for surgery, aged 2 to 11 years, participated in the study, and received, at random, one or other of these strategies premedication.

The analysis of the scores obtained by the young participants to the various questionnaires to assess the intensity of their preoperative anxiety showed no significant difference between the two groups, indicating that the impact of hypnosis on this parameter is comparable to that of the drug treatment.

In addition, the authors point out, it seems that not only the children who received premedication with hypnosis were less anxious at the time of induction of anesthesia, but the number of children also showed less anxiety higher in this group (39%, against 68% of participants who received the drug).

Finally, responses to specific questionnaires used during the postoperative period showed a rate almost two times less behavior disorders in children who had premedication with hypnosis than those who received a benzodiazepine (30% against 62% in the first postoperative day, 26% against 59% after one week).

For the French doctors, if the drug premedication seems to be the easiest way to alleviate preoperative anxiety in children, non-pharmacological methods should not be disregarded. Indeed, this study shows that, in children, hypnosis relieves preoperative anxiety and reduces the risk of developing behavioral problems during the first week after surgery.

This approach can be applied in most cases (except for the deaf and mentally retarded), could also allow the child to keep a positive memory of anesthesia and operation , which can only be beneficial to the progress of any subsequent interventions, noted French researchers.