Hi All,

Below is an article about Dr. Spiegel from Stanford addressing some doctors in
England about the use of hypnosis in the operating room.
Enjoy !!

Seth-Deborah


News
Hypnotise your patient, surgeons told

US calls for doctors to be taught to use hypnosis instead of general anaesthetic
during some operations

Sunday, 07 June 2009
Doctors should be taught to hypnotise patients not to feel pain instead of using
general anaesthetics during some operations, the Royal Society of Medicine will
be told today.

In what he has described as a "clarion call to the British medical profession",
Professor David Spiegel, of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural
Sciences at Stanford University in the US, will also call on the National
Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) to add hypnotherapy to its
list of approved therapeutic techniques for the treatment of conditions ranging
from allergies and high blood pressure to the pain associated with bone marrow
transplantation, cancer treatment and anaesthesia for liver biopsy. Nice has
already approved the technique for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome.

"It is time for hypnosis to work its way into the mainstream of British
medicine," Spiegel will say at the joint conference of the Royal Society of
Medicine, the British Society of Clinical and Academic Hypnosis and the British
Society of Medical and Dental Hypnosis.

"There is solid science behind what sounds like mysticism and we need to get
that message across to the bodies that influence this area. Hypnosis has no
negative side-effects. It makes operations quicker, as the patient is able to
talk to the surgeon as the operation proceeds, and it is cheaper than
conventional pain relief. Since it does not interfere with the workings of the
body, the patient recovers faster, too.

"It is also extremely powerful as a means of pain relief. Hypnosis has been
accepted and rejected because people are nervous of it. They think it's either
too powerful or not powerful enough, but, although the public are sceptical, the
hardest part of the procedure is getting other doctors to accept it."

Professor Marie-Elisabeth Faymonville, head of the Pain Clinic at Liege
University Hospital in Belgium, who has operated on more than 6,000 patients
using hypnosis combined with a light local anaesthetic, said: "The local
anaesthetic is used only to deaden the surface of the skin while a scalpel
slices through it. It has no effect inside the body.

"The patient is conscious throughout the operation and this helps the doctor and
patient work together. The patient may have to move during an operation and it's
simple to get them to do so if they remain conscious. We've even done a
hysterectomy using the procedure."

The theory behind medical hypnosis is that the body's brain and nervous system
can't always distinguish an imagined situation from a real occurrence. This
means the brain can act on any image or verbal suggestion as if it were reality.
Hypnosis puts patients into a state of deep relaxation that is very susceptible
to imagery. The more vivid this imagery, the greater the effect on the body.

Dr Martin Wall, president of the Section Hypnosis and Psychosomatic Medicine at
the Royal Society of Medicine, said hypnosis fundamentally alters a subject's
state of mind. Hypnosis is not, he said, simply a matter of suggestibility and
relaxation.

Nice said it would welcome submissions for hypnotherapy to be considered as an
approved therapeutic technique on the NHS if it could be cost-effective, and
consistent delivery could be guaranteed.

But Professor Steve Field, who chairs the Royal College of General
Practitioners, said he was sceptical as to whether hypnotherapy could meet these
standards.

"It is a useful tool used by some GPs and patients for relaxation, but I don't
think it is something that we should support being rolled out to all medical
students and all doctors," he said.

"We can't call on the NHS to support it without there being a firm medical and
economic basis, and I'm not convinced those have been proved to exist."


Seth-Deborah Roth CRNA,CCHt,CI
www.hypnotherapyforhealth.com
read my blog at www.hypnotichealth.blogspot.com
as seen on the "MythBusters"


www.sethdeborahroth.isagenix.com