Distant healing of surgical wounds: an exploratory study

Abstract

Background: Distant healing intention (DHI) is one of the most common complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) healing modalities, but clinical trials to date have provided ambivalent support for its efficacy. One possible reason is that DHI effects may involve variables that are sensitive to unknown, uncontrolled, or uncontrollable factors.

Objective: To examine 2 of those potential variables-expectation and belief-we explored the effects of DHI on objective and psychosocial measures associated with surgical wounds in 72 women undergoing plastic surgery.

Design: Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: blinded and receiving DHI (DH), blinded and not receiving DHI (control), and knowing that they were receiving DHI (expectancy). Outcome measures included collagen deposition in a surrogate wound and several self-report measures. DHI was provided by experienced distant healers. No differences in the main measures were observed across the three groups.

Results: Participants' previous belief in the efficacy of DHI was negatively correlated with the status of their mental health at the end of the study (P = .04, 2-tailed), and healers' perceptions of the quality of their subjective "contact" with the participants were negatively correlated both with change in mood (P = .001) and with collagen deposition (P = .04). A post-hoc analysis found that among participants assigned to receive DHI under blinded conditions, those undergoing reconstructive surgery after breast cancer treatment reported significantly better change in mood than those who were undergoing purely elective cosmetic surgery (P = .004).

Conclusion: If future DHI experiments confirm the post-hoc observations, then some of the ambiguity observed in earlier DHI studies may be attributable to interactions among participants' and healers' beliefs, their expectations, and their motivations.

Conflict of interest statement

None of the authors have any financial relationships or other relationships that may pose a conflict of interest with the aims or outcomes of the present study.

Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figures

Figure 1

Means and one standard error of the mean error bars for hours of surgery in the control, distant healing and expectation groups.

Figure 2

Means and one standard error of the mean error bars for natural log of collagen deposition for the control group (blinded, not receiving DHI), the distant healing group (blinded, receiving DHI), and the expectation group (unblinded, receiving DHI).

Figure 3

Means and one standard error of the mean error bars for change in mood (POMS) scores from day of surgery to end of DHI period 8 days later.

Figure 4

Means and one standard error bars for SF-36 PCS (physical composite score) and MCS (mental composite score) on the last day of the 8-day DHI period.

Figure 5

Interaction between mean change in mood scores and purpose of the surgery, with one standard error of the mean error bars.