Contribution of Hypnosis in Guided Hepatic Biopsy

Hepatic Biopsy Puncture (HBP) is a very useful procedure for the assessment of chronic liver disease as well as in certain acute situations, and is also essential in oncology for the histological diagnosis of primary and secondary focal lesions. A study on the prevalence and characteristics of induced pain shows that it is a pain-generating procedure for 84% of patients and that the combination of anxiolytics and local anesthesia is insufficient. The effect of relaxing therapies was evaluated during percutaneous interventional radiology procedures. Anxiety and pain measured with visual analogue scales were significantly reduced in the group receiving support from sophrology and hypnosis . The mean evaluation of anxiety per procedure was 2.07 (95% CI, 1.48-2.82) in the group receiving relaxation therapy compared with 5.94 (95% CI, 4.62-7.22) in the other group. The mean level of pain felt was 1.83 (95% CI, 1.23-2.78) for the accompanied procedures versus 4.16 (95% CI, 2.53-6.04) without accompaniment. However, this study did not specifically look at percutaneous liver biopsy, and moreover the relaxation technique used was based on sophrology and not on an Ericksonian hypnosis approach.

Data concerning the use of hypnosis during percutaneous liver biopsies are limited to clinical cases, which report an absence of pain felt, including an observation in a patient who did not receive local anesthesia because of a history of allergy to Lidocaine.

Training in attentive and benevolent patient care already allows this type of procedure to be performed under good conditions in our department. This training of about one hour, carried out internally, does not require specific means. It would therefore seem useful to see what the impact is of using Ericksonian hypnosis, a recognized and risk-free technique which would require longer specific training for the staff and would represent a cost.