AIM:To assess whether psychological intervention reduces postembolization pain during hepatic arterial chemoembolization therapy.METHODS:Two hundred and sixty-two patients,who required hepatic arterial chemoembolization for hepatic malignancy and postembolization pain,were randomized into control group(n = 46,receiving medication)and intervention group(n = 216,receiving psychological intervention and medication in t).The symptom checklist-90 (SCL-90) was used to scale the psychological symptoms of the patients before operation.Pain was scored with a 0 to 10 numeric rating scale(NRS-10)before and after analgesia as well as after psychological intervention(only in intervention group).RESULTS:All psychological symptomatic scores measured with SCL-90 in the intervention group were higher than the normal range in Chinese (P ＜ 0.05).The somatization,phobia and anxiety symptomatic scores were associated with pain numerical rating score before analgesia(r = 0.141, 0.157 and 0.192,respectively,P ＜ 0.05).Patients in both groups experienced pain relief after medication,psychotherapy or psychotherapy combined with medication during the procedure (P ＜ 0.01).Only some patients in the intervention group reported partial or entire pain relief (29.17% and 2.31%) after psychological intervention.The pain score after analgesia in the intervention group was significantly lower than that in the control group (P ＜ 0.01).CONCLUSION:Severe psychological distress occurs in patients with hepatic malignancy.Psychological intervention reduces pain scores significantly during hepatic arterial chemoembolization therapy and is thus,highly recommended as a complementary approach to drug analgesia.