Noetic therapies may benefit cardiac patients

Data from a pilot study suggested that noetic therapies can reduce preprocedural distress and might affect outcomes in patients undergoing coronary surgery.

“Music, imagery, touch and prayer as adjuncts to interventional cardiac care: the Monitoring and Actualisation of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) II randomized study” was conducted by staff at the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, North Carolina.

Noetic interventions are defined as therapies for which the method of administration does not use a tangible drug or medical device. This study examined the effect of two noetic treatment strategies on patients with coronary-artery disease. One treatment strategy was intercessory prayer, and the other was music, imagery and touch (MIT) therapy.

Cardiac patients in nine U.S. locations, undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention or elective catheterization, were randomly assigned bedside noetic intervention (MIT therapy) or no intervention. They were simultaneously randomly assigned off-site prayer or no off-site prayer. Of the 748 patients, 192 were assigned standard care with neither intervention, 182 prayer only, 185 bedside MIT therapy only, and 189 both prayer and MIT therapy.

Off-site prayer was provided by established congregations of various religions, including Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist groups. A prayer-group coordinator provided the name, age and illness of each patient to each of 12 prayer groups. Timing, content and duration of prayers were not determined by study design, but rather were defined by the customary practices of each prayer group.

Patients assigned to MIT therapy received a 40-minute open bedside session by a practitioner certified in Level 1 Healing Touch. Each patient was taught relaxed abdominal breathing and to focus on a mental image of a favorite place, and selected a musical preference. Identical music-imagery scripts were used for all patients in all sites. After the imagery script, the practitioner applied 21 Healing Touch hand positions, each for 45 seconds.

Neither masked prayer nor MIT therapy significantly improved clinical outcome after elective catheterization or percutaneous coronary intervention. No significant differences were found among these four treatment groups, and there were no significant interactions between MIT therapy and prayer. However, mortality at six months was lower with MIT therapy than with no MIT therapy.

“Whether bedside and remote prayer have any effect on clinical outcomes remains controversial,” the authors state. They also state that although there was significantly less preprocedural distress associated with bedside MIT therapy, it is not yet possible to discern which component of the treatment strategy (the music, the imagery or the touch) is responsible. “Although these approaches are among the most ancient of healing practices, scientific quantification of the methods, mechanisms, safety, and effectiveness… is at a very early stage.”

— Source: Duke Clinical Research Institute Duke University Medical Center, and Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center, Virginia Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina; Geisinger Medical Center, Danville, Pennsylvania; Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine, San Diego, California; Florida Cardiovascular Group–Research, Atlantis, Florida; Minneapolis Heart Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, New York; Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC; and the Department of Medicine/Cardiology and. Originally published in The Lancet, July 16, 2005, Vol. 366, pp. 211–217.

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