[Negative and positive suggestions in anaesthesia : Improved communication with anxious surgical patients]

In extreme situations, for example during emergencies or when facing surgery, patients exhibit heightened and focused attention and increased susceptibility to suggestion. In this trance-like state negative suggestion, usually spoken unintentionally can aggravate anxiety, stress and pain. On the other hand words can offer an opportunity to benefit the patient via positive suggestion. In order to improve communication with anxious patients during stressful and painful medical procedures, certain hypnotherapeutic insights and methods can be employed, such as utilization, reframing, indirect suggestion, safe place, dissociation, metaphors, posthypnotic instructions and non-verbal communication and this without requiring formal hypnotic induction and without need for additional time, premises or personnel. Indications for such approaches are the preoperative visit, induction of anaesthesia, as well as operations under local or regional anaesthesia. An extreme example of the latter is awake craniotomy employing cranial nerve blocks and an awake-awake technique avoiding centrally acting drugs. Such hypnotic communication can help the patient to regain self-control and access to inner resources.