Distraction Therapy Billings MT

For Smoother Surgery, Invite the Outdoors In

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Naturally, lounging next to a mountain stream in a spring meadow feels great. What’s surprising is that when you’re lying on an operating table in the hospital about to have a tube stuck down your throat, simply looking at a picture and listening to an audiotape of such a scene can feel good, too.

In fact, new research shows it can actually make the procedure less painful. In a recent study at Johns Hopkins University, 80 patients undergoing bronchoscopy were divided into two groups. They all received typical pain control drugs that left them awake but relaxed and less sensitive to pain; half also “experienced” the idyllic rural scene via headphones and a large mural attached to the wall. The researchers found that patients receiving the combined therapy were 43 percent more likely to give top ratings to their pain control than those who received only the medications.Distraction therapy, as the technique is called, could be effective for any invasive procedure in which the patient remains awake, says Gregory B. Diette, a pulmonary specialist and the study’s lead author at JHU. He encourages anyone undergoing other invasive procedures such as arthroscopy, sigmoidoscopy, or even just a blood draw to consider giving it a try. “There’s no harm that can come from it,” he says. “It’s risk free.”But exactly which sights and sounds to bring to the hospital may take a little more fine-tuning. In the study, one patient urinated on the operating table—a sign that the sound of running water may have been a bit too evocative.

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