2 percent, 8 percent

One of the biggest problems for patients is developing confidence that they can banish this physical disorder with a learning program. That kind of thing is completely outside of people?s medical experience. It is my job to convince them that it can be done.The Treatment of TMS FOLLOW UP SURVEYS An important confidence builder is the fact that most people who have gone through the program have been successful. In 1982 we did a follow up survey on 177 patients who had been treated between 1978 and 1981. Seventy six percent were leading normal lives with little or no pain, 8 percent were improved and 16 percent were unchanged. Some of those patients had not had the benefit of lectures and in many other ways the program was not as sophisticated as it is now.

In 1987 a similar follow up study was done, this time on a group of patients who all had CT scan?documented herniated discs and had the TMS program between 1983 and 1986. This time percent (ninety six people) were successful, 10 percent were improved and only 2 percent were unchanged.

Still more recently the well known journalist writer Tony Schwartz, who was successfully treated in 1986, mentioned in an article he wrote for New York magazine on Dr. Bernie Siegel that he had referred the program to forty patients for treatment and thirty nine of them were free of pain. I call this Tony Schwartz?s miniseries.