[Use of hypnotism in transcutaneous renal biopsy. Preliminary results]

We wish to point out the outstanding importance of kidney biopsy in diagnosis of kidney diseases and enphasize the fact that it is very important for the patient to give one's full cooperation, in order to achieve the most successful results. Anxious subjects and children usually do not give this cooperation owing to their excessive emotional reactions to the special situation of the biopsy and so we think it useful to induce beforehand a hypnotic state in them, hoping that this would make it possible to carry out the research with the usual transcutaneous technique. In this research, which is to be considered as preliminary, ten patients were examined, nine of whom aged from three to fourteen and one aged forty-six. Eight subjects, out of ten, reached such a degree of hypnotic depth that it was possible to carry out the biopsy in a few minutes without noteworthy difficulties. The high ratio of successful cases and the lack of any considerable complications in their experiments enable the Authors, though still waiting for a wider range of data, to suggest since now the use of hypnosis whenever the patients prove reluctant to cooperation.