Mindfulness and Yoga Therapy for Acute Pain in Sickle Cell Disease

This is a prospective single arm study of mindfulness interventions for sickle cell patients admitted with an acute vaso-occlusive pain crisis. Patients will be accrued over a consecutive 12 week period. All genotypes of sickle cell disease will be eligible for enrollment.

After providing informed consent, the patients will have access to 4 videos on their hospital room television. The videos contain guided mindfulness meditation, breathing exercises (including the use of an incentive spirometer), and gentle yoga therapy that can be performed in the supine position from a hospital bed. Videos vary in length from 5-12 minutes. Participants will have the ability to watch the videos as many times as they choose. They may also turn off the video at any time.

The primary outcome is feasibility and acceptability of the intervention. We will record objective data on how many videos are watched by each participant, as well as the percentage of each video completed. We will obtain information about the participants' perception of the intervention through a post-intervention survey and interview.