(1) A form of cancerous tumour endemic among African children.
of the neck of the womb.
26 research
*
eu No. 63 | APRIL 2010
Queen Fabiola of Belgium greatly helped to
publicise the use of hypnosis in anaesthesia
by undergoing this form of treatment
herself in 2009. Developed at the
University Hospital of Liège (BE),
this practice has been copied in
France, Switzerland and the United
States, but Belgium remains the
pioneer. We sent our reporter to
the Cliniques Universitaires
Saint-Luc in Brussels, where
we watched carotid artery
surgery being done under
hypnosis.
“My voice goes
with you”
REPORT
Y
ou are driving your car. Suddenly,
you realise how far you have driv-
en, but that all this time your mind
was elsewhere. This extremely
common condition is nothing other than a mild
hypnotic trance. That is, a state of conscious-
ness, a different perception of the world, in
which the unconscious comes to the surface.
“You need to be very careful with your use
of words. The unconscious cannot handle neg-
atives: if you ask the patient if he is not scared
or if he is not afraid of pain, all he will remem-
ber are the words ‘scared’, ‘fear’ and ‘pain’, all
of which are negatively connotated. This can
derail the whole process”, warns Christine
Watremez, an anaesthetist at Saint-Luc, before
we met Jean, who is about to undergo an
endarterectomy (
1
) for carotid stenosis.
We are far from such words when, on the eve
of his surgery, we ask this pleasant retired gen-
tleman in what state of mind he is in: “Calm,
relaxed… I’m really surprised at myself! I’ve
already had several operations under general
anaesthesia and it’s never agreed with me. When
they told me we could avoid this by operating
under hypnosis, I jumped at the opportunity.
They have been practising hypno-anaesthesia
for six years now at Saint-Luc. Apart from
Christine Watremez, the clinic has three oth-
er anaesthetists trained in this technique.
They carry out an average of two operations
a day under hypnosis. One of them, Fabienne
Roelants, tells us that patients are classified
into four categories: “there are people like this
patient who react badly to a general anaes-
thetic, there are self-employed people who
want to return to work faster, and then there
are a number of people who are referred to
us because nobody dares to give them an
© Laur
enc
e Buelens
research
*
eu No. 63 | APRIL 2010
27
anaesthetic because they are too fragile. And
finally there are those who are just plain
curious!”
Avoiding pharmacological coma
A general anaesthetic consists, no more
nor less, of plunging the patient into a phar-
macologically reversible coma, during which
his respiratory and cardiac functions are per-
formed by medical devices. This coma is
induced by a cocktail of sedatives, causing loss
of consciousness, painkillers, which suppress
pain, and possibly of curare, which relaxes
the muscles. It remains, therefore, a heavy and
difficult to control medical act.
Hypnosis, which can be defined as a sub-
jective state in which changes in perception
can be induced by suggestion, has long been
known to have an analgesic effect. It appeared
in effect as an adjunct to surgery as early as
1830, but quickly fell into obscurity, eclipsed
by the arrival of ether a few years later.
In 1992, Marie-Elisabeth Faymonville, an
anaesthetist at the University Hospital of Liège
(BE), became interested in work being done
in Switzerland by an anaesthetist who was
using hypnosis to relieve patients with severe
burns. “I discovered that hypnosis was not
a gift, but something that could be learned.
I said to myself: we can develop this into
a complete anaesthetic technique”, she recalls.
That year, she popularised the practice with
first aesthetic, then endocrine surgery. “Today,
it is also being used in breast, vascular, oph-
thalmic and ear, nose and throat surgery. You
can also use it for removing peripheral tumours
or operating hernias”, she adds. In summary, we
can say that the practice is suitable for all super-
ficial surgery where a local anaesthesia is feasi-
ble but not enough to ensure patient comfort.
To date, the CHU Liège operating team has
conducted more than 7 000 operations under
hypnosis. Several clinical studies have assessed
the effects. A retrospective study has examined
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
