title: 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.
  
  
  METHODS
  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).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  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.
authors: Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, CA 94952, USA.
authors: Marilyn
authors: M
authors: Schlitz
authors: Harriet W
authors: HW
authors: Hopf
authors: Loren
authors: L
authors: Eskenazi
authors: Cassandra
authors: C
authors: Vieten
authors: Dean
authors: D
authors: Radin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology / Q000601:surgery; D003094:Collagen / Q000378:metabolism; D000529:Complementary Therapies; D015986:Confounding Factors, Epidemiologic; D003469:Culture; D017558:Elective Surgical Procedures / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D033182:Intention; D008603:Mental Health; D008875:Middle Aged; D010465:Perception; D011183:Postoperative Complications / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy; D012107:Research Design; D057566:Self Report; D013518:Surgery, Plastic / Q000523:psychology; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D035502:Trust; D014945:Wound Healing; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000628:therapy
chemical_list: D003094:Collagen