Music, Imagery, Touch, and Prayer as Adjuncts to Interventional Cardiac Care: The Monitoring and Actualisation of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) II Randomised Study
📄 Original study ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
This was the biggest rigorous trial ever done to test whether prayer and bedside healing therapies actually help heart patients — 748 people across nine US hospitals, published in The Lancet. Patients undergoing heart procedures were randomly assigned to receive (or not) off-site prayer from strangers and a bedside combo of music, guided imagery, and healing touch (MIT). The headline result? Neither prayer nor MIT made a meaningful difference on the main outcome — complications, death, or hospital readmission over six months. However, there was a tantalizing twist: MIT patients were significantly less stressed before their procedures, and a secondary analysis hinted at dramatically lower death rates in the MIT group. But that mortality finding was based on just 27 deaths total, making it statistically shaky. This study perfectly captures a recurring pattern in healing research — the primary result says "no effect," but a secondary finding whispers "maybe something interesting is happening here."
Research Notes
The definitive MANTRA II trial — the largest multicenter RCT of intercessory prayer in cardiac care, published in The Lancet. Its null primary results for both prayer and MIT therapy are central to Controversy #5 (distant healing/prayer). The secondary mortality finding for MIT, based on only 27 deaths, illustrates the common tension between null primaries and suggestive secondaries in healing research.
A multicenter 2x2 factorial RCT tested whether bedside music, imagery, and touch (MIT) therapy or double-blind off-site intercessory prayer improved outcomes in 748 patients undergoing cardiac catheterization or PCI at nine US centers. Neither MIT therapy nor prayer significantly affected the primary composite endpoint of in-hospital MACE plus 6-month death or readmission (MIT: HR 1.09, 95% CI 0.86-1.39; prayer: HR 0.97, 95% CI 0.77-1.24). A secondary analysis found significantly lower 6-month mortality with MIT therapy (HR 0.35, 95% CI 0.15-0.82, p=0.016). MIT therapy also significantly reduced pre-procedural distress (p<0.0001). The authors concluded that neither therapy significantly improved clinical outcome after elective catheterization or PCI.
Links
Related Papers
Companion
- Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial — Leibovici, Leonard (2001)
- The Efficacy of "Distant Healing": A Systematic Review of Randomized Trials — Astin, John A (2000)
- Distant Healing of Surgical Wounds: An Exploratory Study — Schlitz, Marilyn (2012)
- Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in Cardiac Bypass Patients: A Multicenter Randomized Trial of Uncertainty and Certainty of Receiving Intercessory Prayer — Benson, Herbert (2006)
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📋 Cite this paper
Krucoff, Mitchell W, Crater, Suzanne W, Gallup, Dianne, Blankenship, James C, Cuffe, Michael, Guarneri, Mimi, Krieger, Richard A, Kshettry, Vib R, Morris, Kenneth, Oz, Mehmet, Pichard, Augusto, Sketch, Michael H. Jr, Koenig, Harold G, Mark, Daniel, Lee, Kerry L (2005). Music, Imagery, Touch, and Prayer as Adjuncts to Interventional Cardiac Care: The Monitoring and Actualisation of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) II Randomised Study. The Lancet. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(05)67014-7
@article{krucoff_2005_music,
title = {Music, Imagery, Touch, and Prayer as Adjuncts to Interventional Cardiac Care: The Monitoring and Actualisation of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) II Randomised Study},
author = {Krucoff, Mitchell W and Crater, Suzanne W and Gallup, Dianne and Blankenship, James C and Cuffe, Michael and Guarneri, Mimi and Krieger, Richard A and Kshettry, Vib R and Morris, Kenneth and Oz, Mehmet and Pichard, Augusto and Sketch, Michael H. Jr and Koenig, Harold G and Mark, Daniel and Lee, Kerry L},
year = {2005},
journal = {The Lancet},
doi = {10.1016/S0140-6736(05)67014-7},
}