Therapeutic Touch

Integrative alternative therapies, also known as holistic therapies, have many applications in hospitals and health centers. These may include relaxation therapies, meditation, massage, reflexology, and Reiki or healing touch. Patients today are looking for these services, and institutions continue to explore ways to provide them without affecting their bottom line. The Integrative Cardiac Wellness Program is such a service, and its growth and longevity comes out of the personal investment of the staff to the program and to their patients.

BACKGROUND: Therapeutic Touch (TT) is an alternative therapy that has gained popularity over the past two decades for helping wounds to heal. Practitioners enter a meditative state and pass their hands above the patient's body to find and correct any imbalances in the patient's 'life energy' or chi. Scientific instruments have been unable to detect this energy. The effect of TT on wound healing has been expounded in anecdotal publications. OBJECTIVES: To identify and review all relevant data to determine the effects of TT on healing acute wounds.

BACKGROUND: Therapeutic Touch (TT) is an alternative therapy that has gained popularity over the past two decades for helping wounds to heal. Practitioners enter a meditative state and pass their hands above the patient's body to find and correct any imbalances in the patient's 'life energy' or chi. Scientific instruments have been unable to detect this energy. The effect of TT on wound healing has been expounded in anecdotal publications. OBJECTIVES: To identify and review all relevant data to determine the effects of TT on healing acute wounds.

BACKGROUND: Therapeutic Touch (TT) is an alternative therapy that has gained popularity over the past two decades for helping wounds to heal. Practitioners enter a meditative state and pass their hands above the patient's body to find and correct any imbalances in the patient's 'life energy' or chi. Scientific instruments have been unable to detect this energy. The effect of TT on wound healing has been expounded in anecdotal publications. OBJECTIVES: To identify and review all relevant data to determine the effects of TT on healing acute wounds.

BACKGROUND: Therapeutic Touch (TT) is an alternative therapy that has gained popularity over the past two decades for helping wounds to heal. Practitioners enter a meditative state and pass their hands above the patient's body to find and correct any imbalances in the patient's 'life energy' or chi. Scientific instruments have been unable to detect this energy. The effect of TT on wound healing has been expounded in anecdotal publications. OBJECTIVES: To identify and review all relevant data to determine the effects of TT on healing acute wounds.

PURPOSE: Despite widespread popular use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies, a rigorous evidence base about their efficacy for cancer-related pain is lacking. This is a systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating CAM therapies for cancer-related pain. METHODS: RCTs using CAM interventions for cancer-related pain were abstracted using Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED, and Cochrane database. RESULTS: Eighteen trials were identified (eight poor, three intermediate, and seven high quality based on Jadad score), with a total of 1,499 patients.

BACKGROUND: Several recent reviews have reached guardedly positive conclusions about the effectivenessof biofield therapies in healthcare.(1,2) These studies mainly involved randomized controlled trials to determine changes in condition-related outcome measures, but few addressed the biological basis of these effects. STUDY OBJECTIVE AND RATIONALE: We performed a systematic review of studies designed to examine whether biofield therapists undergo physiological changes as they enter the healing state.

OBJECTIVE AND CONTEXT: This review was designed to assess the quality and review the outcomes of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of biofield therapies (external qigong, Healing Touch, Johrei, Reiki, and Therapeutic Touch) that report using only nonphysical touch forms of treatment. RCTs of nonphysical contact biofield therapies have the potential to contribute to an evidence base for health-promoting effects mediated through mechanisms outside the present understanding of biomedicine.

PURPOSE: Despite widespread popular use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies, a rigorous evidence base about their efficacy for cancer-related pain is lacking. This is a systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating CAM therapies for cancer-related pain. METHODS: RCTs using CAM interventions for cancer-related pain were abstracted using Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED, and Cochrane database. RESULTS: Eighteen trials were identified (eight poor, three intermediate, and seven high quality based on Jadad score), with a total of 1,499 patients.

BACKGROUND: Biofield therapies offer a novel, non-invasive approach to treating chronic diseases based on assessing and adjusting an individual's physiological and emotional responses through their bio-energetic field.