Effectiveness of Laying-on-of-hands for Sickle Cell Disease

MOA Health Science Foundation

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 2

Conditions: Anemia; Death; Infection; Pain Crisis Recurrent; Sickle Cell Disease

Treatments: Behavioral: laying-on-of-hands

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01518218

MOA-002

Details and patient eligibility

About

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of 1-year administration of laying-on-of-hands on the morbidity and mortality of patients with sickle cell disease in Africa.

Full description

Patients with sickle cell disease (SCD) have a high risk of premature death in Africa, mainly due to insufficient medical services. SCD patients often visit emergency department and need hospitalization when they suffer from severe pain; however, they manage most of painful episodes at home. Appropriate pain management at home is, therefore, crucial to improve their clinical course and quality of life. Laying-on-of-hands may be a good candidate for home care management, because family member(s) can become a practitioner of laying-on-of-hands without difficulty and administer it to their loved one as an initial treatment whenever necessary. There are no reports concerning the effectiveness of laying-on-of-hands for the outcomes of SCD patients, as far as we have investigated.

Enrollment: 40 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 3 to 40 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• patients with symptoms associated with sickle cell disease
• those able to receive laying-on-of-hands every weekday for 1 year
• those able to receive conventional medical treatment whenever necessary
• those able to receive blood test at the beginning, after 6 month and after 1 year

Exclusion criteria

• those who wish to use other complementary and alternative therapies along with laying-on-of-hands

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

---

40 participants in 2 patient groups

laying-on-of-hands

Experimental group

Description:

Patients of this arm received laying-on-of-hands twice a day (45 minutes each) every weekday for 1year, and received conventional medical treatment if necessary.

Treatment:

Behavioral: laying-on-of-hands

control group

No Intervention group

Description:

Patients of this arm did not receive any alternatives other than conventional treatment.