Guided Imagery for Postoperative Pain, Energy Healing for Quality of Life, Probiotics for Acute Diarrhea in Children, Acupuncture for Postoperative Nausea and Vomiting, and Animal-Assisted Therapy for Mental Disorders

摘要

Mind-body therapies are intended to harness the mind's innate capacity to favorably influence health. Examples include mindfulness meditation, hypnosis, guided imagery, yoga, tai chi, biofeedback, and some forms of cognitive behavioral therapy. These interventions may be particularly useful for improving outcomes of elective surgical procedures. There is evidence that preoperative psychological factors are strongly associated with the course of recovery. Two previous meta-analyses found pre-surgical psychological interventions (psycho-education, behavioral instruction, cognitive therapy, relaxation, hypnosis, and emotion-focused interviewing) to be associated with improvements in post-operative recovery time, pain, and measures of psychological stress.2,3 Effect sizes varied considerably, however, and over-lapping techniques and proposed mechanisms make clinical translation difficult.