Guiding Dreaming During Anaesthesia by Means of Communication Through Suggestions. What Influences Our Suggestions? What do Our Suggestions Influence?

The investigators were carried out up 2009 to 2011 at the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery of the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Debrecen, in a prospective randomized fashion.

Adult patients were included, with whom verbal communication was possible. After a written informed consent, written agreement was obtained. Exclusion criteria were: mental retardation, tracheotomy, and inability to communicate. None of the participants needed to be excluded.

Among others, the most important components of general anaesthesia is providing a sufficient level of hypnosis during the procedure, as well as reducing anxiety in the perioperative period. Perioperatively used hypnosis and suggestive techniques can be employed, in addition to local, or general anaesthesia as complementer techniques for anxiolysis, sedation, relaxation, pain alleviation, and amnesia.

It has been proven that despite the use of depth of anesthesia monitors: in recent decades the occurrance of perioperative dreams cannot be avoided. 7-16 According to our present knowledge, dream formation during the anaesthetic procedure reflects a brief period of light level of hypnosis and dreams show a close relationship to external events in the perioperative period. Unpleasant perioperative dreams or dream recalls may lead to decreased patient satisfaction related to the surgical/anaesthesiological event and thus should be reduced.

It seems that imagination guided by suggestions before anaesthesia induction can modify dream recalls after recovery. The main goal of suggestive techniques in the perioperative phase is to turn the content of dreams toward a favourable direction that is considered a pleasant event by the patient. So far little attention has been paid to the administration of perioperative psychological methods that may meet these requirements.