Teamwork approach to clinical hypnosis at a pediatric pulmonary center

A Pragmatic Guide to the Setting up of Integrated Hypnotherapy Services in Primary Care and Clinical Settings

Despite the continued debate and lack of a clear consensus about the true nature of the hypnotic phenomenon, hypnosis is increasingly being utilized successfully in many medical, health, and psychological spheres as a research method, motivational tool, and therapeutic modality. Significantly, however, although hypnotherapy is widely advertised, advocated, and employed in the private medical arena for the management and treatment of many physical and emotional disorders, too little appears to be being done to integrate hypnosis into primary care and national health medical services. This article discusses some of the reasons for the apparent reluctance of medical and scientific health professionals to consider incorporating hypnosis into their medical practice, including the practical problems inherent in using hypnosis in a medical context and some possible solutions.

The Current Evidence of Integrative Approaches to Pediatric Asthma

Asthma is a complex, multifactorial, and inflammatory chronic condition, and many children who are diagnosed with asthma integrate complementary therapies into their overall care. Due to the chronic nature of asthma, potentially negative side effects of long-term use of allopathic medications, and desire for natural approaches, patients and their families turn toward complementary therapies. Up to 89% of parents use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to treat their child's asthma. This article reviews the current evidence on the most commonly used complementary therapies for pediatric asthma.

Inducible laryngeal obstruction during exercise: moving beyond vocal cords with new insights

Exercise as an important part of life for the health and wellness of children and adults. Inducible laryngeal obstruction (ILO) is a consensus term used to describe a group of disorders previously called vocal cord dysfunction, paradoxical vocal fold motion, and numerous other terms. Exercise-ILO can impair one's ability to exercise, can be confused with asthma, leading to unnecessary prescription of asthma controller and rescue medication, and results in increased healthcare resource utilization including (rarely) emergency care. It is characterized by episodic shortness of breath and noisy breathing that generally occurs at high work rates. The present diagnostic gold standard for all types of ILO is laryngoscopic visualization of inappropriate glottic or supraglottic movement resulting in airway narrowing during a spontaneous event or provocation challenge. A number of different behavioral techniques, including speech therapy, biofeedback, and cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy, may be appropriate to treat individual patients. A consensus nomenclature, which will allow for better characterization of patients, coupled with new diagnostic techniques, may further define the epidemiology and etiology of ILO as well as enable objective evaluation of therapeutic modalities.

Management and diagnosis of psychogenic cough, habit cough, and tic cough: a systematic review

BACKGROUND

Several pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic therapeutic options have been used to treat cough that is not associated with a pulmonary or extrapulmonary etiology.

METHODS

We conducted a systematic review to summarize the evidence supporting different cough management options in adults and children with psychogenic, tic, and habit cough. Medline, EMBASE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Scopus were searched from the earliest inception of each database to September 2013. Content experts were contacted, and we searched bibliographies of included studies to identify additional references.

RESULTS

A total of 18 uncontrolled studies were identified, enrolling 223 patients (46% male subjects, 96% children and adolescents). Psychogenic cough was the most common descriptive term used (90% of the studies). Most of the patients (95%) had no cough during sleep; barking or honking quality of cough was described in only eight studies. Hypnosis (three studies), suggestion therapy (four studies), and counseling and reassurance (seven studies) were the most commonly used interventions. Hypnosis was effective in resolving cough in 78% of the patients and improving it in another 5%. Suggestion therapy resolved cough successfully in 96% of the patients. The greatest majority of improvements noted with these forms of therapy occurred in the pediatric age group. The quality of evidence is low due to the lack of control groups, the retrospective nature of all the studies, heterogeneity of definitions and diagnostic criteria, and the high likelihood of reporting bias.

CONCLUSIONS

Only low-quality evidence exists to support a particular strategy to define and treat psychogenic, habit, and tic cough. Patient values, preferences, and availability of potential therapies should guide treatment choice.

Hypnosis in paediatric respiratory medicine

Hypnotherapy is an often misunderstood yet effective therapy. It has been reported to be useful within the field of paediatric respiratory medicine as both a primary and an adjunctive therapy. This article gives a brief overview of how hypnotherapy is performed followed by a review of its applications in paediatric patients with asthma, cystic fibrosis, dyspnea, habit cough, vocal cord dysfunction, and those requiring non-invasive positive pressure ventilation. As the available literature is comprised mostly of case series, retrospective studies, and only a single small randomized study, the field would be strengthened by additional randomized, controlled trials in order to better establish the effectiveness of hypnosis as a treatment, and to identify the processes leading to hypnosis-induced physiologic changes. As examples of the utility of hypnosis and how it can be taught to children with respiratory disease, the article includes videos that demonstrate its use for patients with cystic fibrosis.

Disseminating hypnosis to health care settings: Applying the RE-AIM framework

Hypnosis is a brief intervention ready for wider dissemination in medical contexts. Overall, hypnosis remains underused despite evidence supporting its beneficial clinical impact. This review will evaluate the evidence supporting hypnosis for dissemination using guidelines formulated by Glasgow and colleagues (1999). Five dissemination dimensions will be considered: Reach, Efficacy, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance (RE-AIM).

REACH

In medical settings, hypnosis is capable of helping a diverse range of individuals with a wide variety of problems.

EFFICACY

There is evidence supporting the use of hypnosis for chronic pain, acute pain and emotional distress arising from medical procedures and conditions, cancer treatment-related side-effects and irritable bowel syndrome.

ADOPTION

Although hypnosis is currently not a part of mainstream clinical practices, evidence suggests that patients and healthcare providers are open to trying hypnosis, and may become more so when educated about what hypnosis can do.

IMPLEMENTATION

Hypnosis is a brief intervention capable of being administered effectively by healthcare providers.

MAINTENANCE

Given the low resource needs of hypnosis, opportunities for reimbursement, and the ability of the intervention to potentially help medical settings reduce costs, the intervention has the qualities necessary to be integrated into routine care in a self-sustaining way in medical settings. In sum, hypnosis is a promising candidate for further dissemination.

Pediatric paradoxical vocal-fold motion: presentation and natural history

OBJECTIVES

To describe (1) a cohort of children with paradoxical vocal-fold motion (PVFM) who were referred to a multidisciplinary airway center and (2) the outcomes of various treatment modalities including speech therapy, gastroesophageal reflux disease treatment, and psychiatric treatment.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

This was a case series with chart review of children younger than 18 years with PVFM evaluated at a tertiary care pediatric airway center over a 36-month period.

RESULTS

Fifty-nine children with PVFM were evaluated. The cohort had a mean age of 13.64 years (range: 8-18 years) and a female-to-male ratio of 3:1. Speech therapy as an initial treatment resulted in a 63% (24 of 38) success rate after an average of 3.7 treatment sessions. Speech therapy was a more successful treatment than antireflux therapy (P = .001). Ten percent (6 of 59) of the children presented with a known psychiatric diagnosis, and 30% (18 of 59) of children in the cohort were ultimately diagnosed with a psychiatric condition. Children with inspiratory stridor at rest had a lower initial success rate with speech therapy (56%), a higher rate of underlying psychiatric disorders (75%), and a high rate of success after psychiatric treatment (100%) that required, on average, 3 sessions over a 2-month period.

CONCLUSIONS

To our knowledge, this is the largest study to date on pediatric PVFM. The majority of children with PVFM improve with speech therapy. Children with PVFM at rest may be better treated with psychiatric therapy than speech therapy. Furthermore, children who present with symptoms at rest may have a higher likelihood of underlying psychiatric disease.

Treatment of psychological factors in a child with difficult asthma: a case report

Difficult asthma is defined as the persistence of asthma symptoms, abnormal pulmonary function showing airway obstruction, and continued requirement for short-acting bronchodilator therapy, despite adequate treatment with inhaled corticosteroids. It calls for a thorough evaluation of the patient to look into alternate and complicating diagnoses. The authors report a case of a 9-year-old patient with difficult asthma who failed to respond to conventional therapy. Although it was recognized that he had a number of potential medical complicating factors including allergies, chronic sinusitis, and gastroesophageal reflux, a psychological intervention using hypnosis ultimately appeared to help alleviate his symptoms completely. Thus, psychological evaluation and intervention should be considered early in the course of management of a patient with difficult asthma, because it may help avoid time-consuming and expensive investigations of potential complicating factors, and it may yield rapid improvement in the patient's clinical condition.

Complementary and alternative therapies: use in pediatric pulmonary medicine

With increased awareness of complementary/alternative medicine (CAM) and concern of potential adverse effects or limited effectiveness of conventional medications, patients and parents are looking to CAM approaches as either an alternative or as adjunct therapy, especially for chronic diseases such as asthma or cystic fibrosis. It is important that practitioners have adequate information so that patients and parents receive balanced and accurate information, especially regarding safety and potential efficacy. This review provides an overview of some of the more frequently used CAM therapies for children with chronic pulmonary disorders and summarizes the basic principles of each modality, along with efficacy and safety data.

Pediatric asthma: an integrative approach to care

Asthma in children and young adults is a complex disease with many different phenotypic expressions. Diagnosis is often made based on history and lung function including measuring airway reversibility. However, in children younger than 6 years of age, the diagnosis is more difficult because many children wheeze in the first 4-6 years of life, especially with viral infections. For those children, asthma treatment is often started empirically. Those who go on to develop chronic asthma most likely have a genetic predisposition and exposure to various environmental factors resulting in chronic inflammation of the lower respiratory tract. There are established national guidelines for diagnosing and treating asthma in children and adults. For persistent asthma, it is recommended that medications be taken on a regular basis after identifying and avoiding environmental triggers. Because many factors play a role in developing asthma in children, many nonmedical approaches to asthma and asthma-like conditions have been promoted even when the diagnosis is at times uncertain. The nonmedical approaches and therapies are often referred to as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). This review will discuss the conventional therapies recommended for children with asthma in addition to CAM therapies, some of which have supporting scientific evidence. Integrating conventional and CAM therapies can prove to be an effective way to treat pediatric asthma, a common and chronic childhood lung disorder. A case is provided to illustrate how such an integrative approach was used in the successful treatment of a child with moderate persistent asthma.

Integrative medicine and asthma

Childhood asthma is a spectrum of symptoms and clinical presentations. The treatment begins with developing goals of therapy for a child by the health care provider, the family, and the child as a team. The primary objective is to reduce symptoms and exacerbations using therapies that include conventional medications, environmental controls, and lifestyle modification while reducing the potential for adverse effects of medications and the disease. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) may play a role in meeting these objectives, and through the integration of conventional and CAM therapies, an integrative medicine approach may facilitate reaching these objectives in a more effective manner.

Practitioner review: clinical applications of pediatric hypnosis

BACKGROUND

Over the past quarter century, hypnosis has been employed in a broad range of pediatric clinical settings; however, its efficacy and feasibility as a treatment approach for children and adolescents remain in question.

METHOD

Published studies on the role of clinical hypnosis in the management of specific pediatric medical and psychological conditions were identified and reviewed.

RESULTS

Pediatric clinical hypnosis has been employed in diverse medical settings to treat primary conditions (e.g., enuresis), as well as to address factors related to management of the condition (e.g., skills training for asthma) or its treatment (e.g., burn dressing changes). Despite great breadth to the possible applications of pediatric hypnosis and many reported successes, much of the present research comprises case histories and small, uncontrolled group studies.

CONCLUSION

To date, research in pediatrics views clinical hypnosis as a promising tool with the potential to help manage a variety of conditions. However, additional research, particularly utilizing randomized, controlled methodologies and adequate sample sizes, is required.

Evidence-based hypnotherapy for asthma: a critical review

Asthma is a chronic disease with intermittent acute exacerbations, characterized by obstructed airways, hyper-responsiveness, and sometimes by chronic airway inflammation. Critically reviewing evidence primarily from controlled outcome studies on hypnosis for asthma shows that hypnosis is possibly efficacious for treatment of symptom severity and illness-related behaviors and is efficacious for managing emotional states that exacerbate airway obstruction. Hypnosis is also possibly efficacious for decreasing airway obstruction and stabilizing airway hyper-responsiveness in some individuals, but there is insufficient evidence that hypnosis affects asthma's inflammatory process. Promising research needs to be replicated with larger samples and better designs with careful attention paid to the types of hypnotic suggestions given. The critical issue is not so much whether it is used but how it is used. Future outcome research must address the relative contribution of expectancies, hypnotizability, hypnotic induction, and specific suggestions.