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HYPNOTIC ANALGESIA IN PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES
203
M
ETHOD
Participants
Thirty-three individuals with chronic pain and disability (spinal
cord injury,
n
= 13; multiple sclerosis,
n
= 10; acquired amputation,
n
= 7;
cerebral palsy,
n
= 1; postpolio syndrome,
n
= 1; Charcot-Marie-Tooth
disease,
n
= 1) volunteered to participate in the current case series.
Inclusion criteria included: (a) having a physical disability; (b) report-
ing a chronic pain problem; (c) being 18 years of age or older; (d) being
able to speak, read, and write English; and (e) expressing an interest in
hypnotic analgesia. The mean age of the study participants was 50.6
years (range = 28–79). Eighteen (55%) of the study participants were
women, and 31 (95%) were Caucasian. One participant (3%) was African
American, and one (3%) was Asian American.
Prebaseline (2 to 27 weeks,
M
= 6.38 weeks,
SD
= 5.11 weeks, before
treatment) data were collected from all 33 study participants. Two
participants could not be contacted by telephone during the 7-day
postbaseline window immediately before treatment by the study
research assistant, and so postbaseline data were available for only 31
participants. Postbaseline values for the 2 participants who were not
contacted were estimated by multiplying their prebaseline scores by
the mean prebaseline to postbaseline percent change for each outcome
measure, computed from the other 31 study participants.
One participant could not be contacted during the posttreatment
assessment window, and so posttreatment data were available for 32
(97%) of the participants. Although all participants were contacted at
the 3-month follow-up, 2 of these elected to not provide follow-up
data, so 3-month follow-up data were available for 31 (94%) of the par-
ticipants. Complete data (outcome measures from each of four assess-
ment points) were available for 30 (91%) of the participants recruited
into the study, and all of these participants were included in the intent-
to-treat analyses, reported below.
3
During either the treatment or follow-up period, 3 of the participants
developed medical problems that impacted their pain experience but
3
An intent-to-treat analyses is performed to estimate the effects of an intervention on a
population of individuals who might be offered or who begin treatment. It is a relatively
conservative analysis, because it includes participants who would be unlikely to benefit
from the treatment even if it were very effective (e.g., treatment dropouts who still provide
outcome data are included). An efficacy analysis, on the other hand, excludes these partic-
ipants. For example, in the current study, data from the patients who did not complete
treatment and the patients who developed medical problems unrelated to hypnosis that
produced pain were excluded from the efficacy analysis; the former would be expected to
show poorer outcomes because they received less treatment, and the latter would be more
likely to report increases, not decreases, in pain. Because the efficacy analysis excludes
patients whose data would likely contribute to an underestimation of treatment effects, it
usually provides a higher estimate of treatment efficacy than the intent-to-treat analysis.