Prayers Help Heart Patients, Study Says
Keep a place in your heart for prayer, especially if your heart is ailing, some Duke University researchers say.
A preliminary study by Dr. Mitch Krucoff, a Duke cardiologist, and nurse practitioner Suzanne Crater indicates that angioplasty patients with acute heart ailments who were prayed for in addition to their medical treatment did 50% to 100% better during their hospital stays than patients who received no prayers.
“When we started this thing, the real question was whether Western medical scientific practitioners would even allow this. We found the staff was not only excited about this, but very excited about this,” Krucoff said.
The study involved 150 patients and was not considered large enough to rule out the possibility that the improvements were merely coincidence. The study was conducted to determine whether a larger study is feasible, and the results were presented at the American Heart Assn.’s annual scientific sessions last week in Dallas.
Krucoff and Crater randomly divided the 150 patients at the Durham Veterans Affairs medical center into five, 30-member groups. All five groups received traditional medical therapies. Three also received nontraditional therapies: stress relaxation, guided imagery or touch therapy.
The names of a fourth group were sent to a group in Jerusalem so a prayer could be inserted in the city’s Western Wall, to Buddhist monks in Nepal and France, to Carmelite nuns in Baltimore and to groups of Moravians and Fundamentalists. The groups prayed for all 30 patients by name.
The study was “double-blinded,” meaning neither the patient nor the staffs at the VA hospital knew the treatment assignment of the fourth group or a fifth group, which received only traditional treatments.
The patients’ progress was measured using EEG monitoring, heart rate, blood pressure and clinical outcomes.
In addition to the improvements recorded in those who received prayers, the patients who received the other nontraditional treatments did 30% to 50% better than the control group.
