Shadow

Prayers don't cure

Distant prayers don't save lifes, something that shouldn't have made the news. It's mostly for the persons who are praying than receiving.

Results of First Multicenter Trial of Intercessory Prayer, Healing Touch in Heart Patients

Co-principal investigators, Suzanne Crater and Dr. Mitchell Krucoff of the MANTRA Project.

More details.

	keywords : Cardiology, prayer research, MANTRA Study, noetic interventions date : 7/14/2005 media contact : Tracey Koepke , (919) 684-4148 or (919) 660-1301 koepk002@mc.duke.edu

DURHAM, N.C. – Distant prayer and the bedside use of music, imagery and touch (MIT therapy) did not have a significant effect upon the primary clinical outcome observed in patients undergoing certain heart procedures, researchers at Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI), Duke University Medical Center, the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) and seven other leading academic medical institutions across the U.S. have found. Therapeutic effects were noted, however, among secondary measures such as emotional distress of patients, re-hospitalization and death rates.

The study marks the first time rigorous scientific protocols have been applied on a large scale to some of the world's most ancient healing traditions, the authors said, and the trends they observed may yield important clues to understanding the role of the human spirit in modern, technology-laden cardiovascular

Method. (I am not interested in the MIT part)

A total of 748 patients with coronary artery disease who were to undergo percutaneous coronary intervention (a type of stenting procedure) or elective cardiac catheterization with possible percutaneous coronary intervention were enrolled at one of nine study sites between May 1999 and Dec. 2002. Patients were randomized equally to each of the two noetic therapies or standard care, creating four treatment groups. One group (189 patients) received both off-site intercessory prayer and MIT therapy; a second group (182 patients) received off-site intercessory prayer only; a third group (185 patients) received MIT therapy only, while the fourth group (192 patients) received neither the intercessory prayer nor the MIT therapy. The interventional heart procedures were all conducted according to each institution's standard practice, and the study called for a six-month period of follow-up.

The prayer portion of the randomization was double-blinded, meaning that patients and their care team did not know which patients were receiving intercessory prayer. Per Institutional Review Board policies governing clinical research, all patients were aware that they might be prayed for by people they did not know, from a variety of faiths. The MIT portion of the study was not blinded, so patients and their care team knew if they were randomized to those groups.

The prayer groups for the study were located throughout the world and included Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish and multiple Christianity-based denominations. The researchers noted 89 percent of the patients in this study also knew of someone praying for them outside of the study protocol altogether.

And an opportunistic design:

Following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, enrollment rates in the study fell sharply for approximately three months. During that time, the research team chose to amend the study by adding a two-tiered prayer strategy. Twelve additional "second-tier" prayer groups were added. When new patients were added to groups receiving intercessory prayers as part of the study, the second-tier prayer groups were asked to pray for the primary prayer groups that had been praying for the patients all along. The researchers created this design to simulate a higher dose of prayer for the remaining patients enrolled in the study. Patients treated with "two-tiered" prayer had absolute six-month death and re-hospitalization rates that were about 30 percent lower than control patients, statistically characterized as a suggestive trend.

Now the results:

The researchers found no significant differences among the treatment groups in the primary composite endpoint. However, six-month mortality was lower in patients assigned bedside MIT, with the lowest absolute death rates observed in patients treated with both prayer and bedside MIT. Patients treated with bedside MIT also showed changes in self-rated emotional distress prior to catheterization and stenting.

"The most statistically significant finding of our analyses so far is the relief of pre-procedural distress with the use of music, imagery and touch administered by a trained practitioner at the patient's bedside," said Suzanne Crater, ANP-C, cardiology nurse practitioner at DUMC and Durham VAMC and co-director of the MANTRA study project at the DCRI. "Whether this relief of distress translates into better outcomes will require further analysis but the implications for every bedside practitioner are of great interest."

[with regard to the prayer:] Patients treated with "two-tiered" prayer had absolute six-month death and re-hospitalization rates that were about 30 percent lower than control patients, statistically characterized as a suggestive trend.

Conclusion:

I don't know what to make of it.

posted by Gary Feng @ 12:59 AM