The effectiveness of the analgetic placebo effect has been confirmed by several meta-analyses: not only can substances without active agents (placebos) achieve (hypo-) analgetic effectiveness, but also the effectiveness of active analgetics can be increased by added placebo effects. For this reason the new AWMF-S3 guidelines (DIVS 2009, www.awmf.org ) on the "treatment of acute and perioperative pain" recommend the clinical use of placebo effects and the avoidance of nocebo effects. The point is not to use placebos as a substitute for analgetics, but rather to add placebo effects on to those of analgetics.
