Forsch Komplementarmed Klass Naturheilkd. 2001 Oct; 8(5): 274-87.

[Distant healing and clinical research]

Ebneter M, Binder M, Saller R.

Abteilung Naturheilkunde, Departement Innere Medizin, Universitätsspital Zürich, Schweiz. mebneter@gmx.net

Distant healing is one of the most controversially discussed methods of complementary medicine. In the first section this paper outlines the history of spiritual healing and describes some possible definitions and different methods of spiritual healing. Based on a literature search in Medline, EMBASE, Current Contents, Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED) as well as a manual tracking, current distant healing studies (excluding therapeutic touch studies) (n = 16) and some review articles (n = 6) are outlined in the second section. In addition, the randomized clinical double-blind studies (n = 12) are judged as to their formal quality by means of the Jadad Scale and the Internal Validity Scale (IV). Based on the controversially discussed study by Harris et al., some discussion points in the research field of spiritual healing are presented in the third section of this paper. From the evidence contained in the studies of this review article, no firm conclusions about the efficacy or inefficacy of healing can yet be made.Copyright 2001 S. Karger GmbH, Freiburg