Intercessory Prayer Page

STUDY FINDS PRAYER HELPS HEART PATIENTS

DURHAM, N.C. (EP) -- Prayer is not only good for your spirit -- it may also be good for your heart, according to researchers at Duke University.

Preliminary results of a study by Duke cardiologist Dr. Mitch Krucoff and nurse practitioner Suzanne Crater suggest that angioplasty patients who received prayer as well as traditional medical treatment did 50 to 100 percent better during recovery than patients who did not receive prayer.

The pilot study was conducted to see if a larger study is warranted. It involved only 150 patients, so the results cannot be considered statistically significant. It was presented Nov. 9 to the American Heart Association's annual meeting in Dallas.

Krucoff and Crater assigned 150 angioplasty patients at the Durham Veterans Affairs medical center into five, 30-person groups. All received traditional medical treatment, but three groups received other, nontraditional therapies, including stress relaxation, touch therapy, and guided imagery.

Names of people in the fourth group were sent to various prayer groups, including Carmelite nuns in Baltimore, Moravians, fundamentalists, Buddhist monks in Nepal and France, and even Jerusalem's Wailing Wall.

A fifth group acted as a control. Neither patients nor staff knew which patients were in the fourth or fifth groups.

Progress of the patients was evaluated using blood pressure, heart rate, EEG monitoring, and outcomes. Patients who received prayer did 50 to 100 percent better, while patients receiving other nontraditional therapies did 30 to 50 percent better than the control group.

"It's not proof, but we consider it ... more than enough reason to do a more significant clinical trial," Krucoff concluded. A larger study involving 1,500 patients is being planned for the near future.