Home-based hypnotherapy an option for functional abdominal pain in children

Last Updated: 2017-03-28

By Reuters Staff

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Home-based hypnotherapy (HT) using a CD is not inferior to individual HT performed by a therapist for treating functional abdominal pain in children, according to a new study.

Treatment with hypnosis using a CD is “an attractive treatment option” for these patients, Dr. Juliette M.T.M. Rutten of Emma Children’s Hospital and Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam and her colleagues conclude in a report online March 27 in JAMA Pediatrics.

Studies have shown that gut-directed HT is effective in both adults and children, they add, with a success rate ranging from 49% to 100%. However, HT is both costly and time-consuming, and hypnotherapists trained to treat children are scarce.

To investigate whether home-based HT might offer an alternative, researchers at nine centers across the Netherlands randomly assigned children with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or FAPS (Rome III criteria) to receive six sessions of individualized HT (iHT) during a three-month period, or to the home treatment group, in which participants performed CD-recorded self-exercises at least five times a week for three months.

After treatment, 36.8% of the 132 children in the CD group and 50.1% in the iHT group were treated successfully, meaning they had a 50% or greater reduction in pain frequency and intensity. At one year, 62.1% of the CD group had been treated successfully, which was non-inferior to the 71.0% in the iHT group.

“HT should be incorporated in national guidelines on the treatment of pediatric IBS or FAPS and become reimbursed by health insurance companies,” Dr. Rutten and her team state. “The non-inferiority of home-based treatment with a hypnosis CD provides a rational for implementation of this easy-to-use treatment in daily practice.”

Because children and adolescents rarely use CDs, the researchers point out, HT should be implemented as an app for smart phones and tablets. Treatment with home-based HT can begin when IBS or FAPS is diagnosed, they add, with no need to wait for a qualified therapist to be available.

Dr. Rutten was not available for an interview by press time.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2nekBAg

JAMA Pediatrics 2017.