Implicit processing and therapeutic suggestion during balanced anaesthesia

The effect of therapeutic suggestion - implicit processing during balanced anaesthesia was studied in 70 female patients scheduled for elective breast surgery. The patients were randomly allocated to listen to a message with reassuring information focused on minimising postoperative nausea and vomiting, or just a blank tape during surgery. Occurrence of nausea and vomiting was studied during the postoperative period. No patient recalled any explicit memories during the peroperative period. No major differences were observed in the number of patients who experienced nausea or vomiting during the 24 hour observation period. The patients exposed to positive suggestion did, however, have a lower frequency of recall for nausea and vomiting compared to those just listening to the blank tape. We did not observe any major effect of peroperative suggestion for postoperative nausea and vomiting. However, we cannot rule out some implicit processing during balanced anaesthesia.