Baseline pain as a moderator of hypnotic analgesia for burn injury treatment

Sixty-one patients hospitalized for severe burns were randomly assigned to conditions in which they received either hypnosis or a control condition in which they received attention, information, and brief relaxation instructions from a psychologist. The posttreatment pain scores of the 2 groups did not differ significantly when all patients were considered. However, when a subset of patients who reported high levels of baseline pain were examined, it was found that patients in the hypnosis group reported less posttreatment pain than did patients in the control group. The findings are used to replicate earlier studies of burn pain hypnoanalgesia, explain discrepancies in the literature, and highlight the potential importance of motivation with this population.