A Randomized, Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote, Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit

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Abstract
FROM TIME immemorial, prayer for the sick has been a common response to the illness of a loved one. In some societies and among certain religious groups, prayer is believed to be the most important therapy that can be offered to a sick person, superseding even medical intervention. Nevertheless, intercessory prayer (praying for others) has rarely been subjected to scientific scrutiny. In 1988, Byrd1 published the results of a blinded, controlled trial of 393 patients who had been admitted to a coronary care unit (CCU) at San Francisco General Hospital, San Francisco, Calif. Patients were randomly assigned to either a usual care group, which received no organized prayer, or to an experimental, intercessory prayer group, which received remote (from outside of the hospital) prayer from persons unknown to them. Byrd reported a statistically significant beneficial effect of intercessory prayer as assessed by a summary "hospital course" score. Three recent books on spirituality and healing2-4 have noted that the Byrd study is the only published trial of intercessory prayer with clinically significant end points, and that more scientifically valid (prospective, randomized, controlled, blinded, etc) studies of prayer were needed. The purpose of the present study was to attempt to replicate Byrd's findings by testing the hypothesis that patients who are unknowingly and remotely prayed for by blinded intercessors will experience fewer complications and have a shorter hospital stay than patients not receiving such prayer.