ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the statistical changes in pain and anxiety between baseline and the subsequent two bone marrow aspirations after the patient has had the benefit of hypnotherapy. In order to have a baseline which indicated the degree of pain and anxiety felt by the patient during routine bone marrow aspirations, the first step took place before there had been any mention of hypnosis or prior participation. The percentage of patients accepting the invitation to the hypnosis program showed a direct relationship to the amount of pain they reported. In reporting pain, we have noted a satisfactory correlation between self-reports of pain and judged estimates of pain. The average differences between self-reported and judged pain are small, in specific instances the differences are great and are therefore important in understanding the pain of individual patients. With the same dichotomy of hypnotizability scores as for pain, a correspondence with anxiety reduction could also be computed.
