Treating Anxiety in Pre- and Post-Surgery Patients

Treating Anxiety in Pre- and Post-Surgery Patients

Multiple research studies have indicated that many adult patients who are undergoing anesthesia and surgery experience untreated anxiety and distress on the morning of surgery (
millions of Americans regularly use complementary and alternative therapies such as acupuncture, herbs, light and sound, and hypnosis. 

Hypnosis is defined as a state of focused attention with heightened receptivity for acceptable suggestions. In this state, a person’s critical or skeptical nature is bypassed, allowing them to accept suggestions. A hypnosis procedure consists of an induction, which gets the patient into the trance state, and then the delivery of acceptable suggestions, which are delivered to the patient to help achieve the goals of the session. Given the increasing popularity of complementary and alternative medicine and the need for the development of new non-pharmaceutical preoperative interventions, a randomized attention- controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of hypnosis as a treatment modality for management of preoperative anxiety was performed. The reader should note that the study was aimed only at measuring the impact of hypnosis on anxiety before surgery. Under the conditions of the study, hypnosis was found to dramatically reduce the anxiety of patients undergoing ambulatory surgery, indicating that one preoperative hypnosis session is very efficient in reducing the anxiety and fear before surgery.

Enter light and sound. Light and sound can enhance the work of physicians, psychologists, hypnotherapists, anesthesiologists and everyday people simply trying to cope with their anxiety. 

How? With special lightframes over your closed eyes and headphones over your ears, you are immersed in colorful geometric patterns and entrancing sounds. The light and sound pulse rate shifts from your normal waking state of beta to the selected state (alpha, theta or delta) as the session progresses while brainwave activity will follow the pulse rate of the light and sound stimulation and fall into synch, referred to as entrainment.

Begin with (and most often stay with) frequencies around 9Hz (although sometimes down as low as 4Hz). Some prefer using light and sound stimulation pre- and post-operation exclusively while others, after using brainwave entrainment for this purpose, continue to use light and sound stimulation indefinitely. Regardless, it is clear that the majority of those who used light and sound brainwave entrainment for their pre- and post-operative anxiety found the stimulation to be quite helpful. Among the most common findings are:

A rapid decrease in both autonomic nervous system hyper-arousal/hyper-reactivity and muscle tension;

A longer and longer duration of these positive effects the more frequently they use light and sound stimulation;

A rapid increase in mental calmness and corresponding decrease in "monkey mind" (thoughts all over the place);

Rapid improvements in sleep (reduced latency to sleep onset, decreased night waking, and increased sense of restfulness come morning) when they use it at regular bedtime and again if they wake during the night and are unable to fall back asleep within 15 minutes;

Self-initiated changes in both behavior and cognitions.

The positive effects noted above are even more remarkable given the anxiety levels typical of most patients preparing for surgery and the adaptations and adjustments needed post surgery.