Effect of a Holistic Mind Body intervention in patients with Coronary Artery Bypass Graft surgery: a single blind Randomized Clinical Trial.

Mind-body therapies such as mindfulness meditation (MM) are increasingly being studied and they seem to be offering multitudes of benefits.  Since becoming popular in the 1970s, MM has been shown to improve psychological states such as anxiety and depression. The scope of MM has expanded in recent years, and MM has been shown to have positive effects on pain, recovery time, and even wound healing after surgery. Training patients in MM before surgery may be implemented at low cost and up to 24 hours before admission. Given these benefits, complementary mind-body therapies such as MM have potential to improve a patient’s surgical experience and outcomes.

Chest physiotherapy in the form of breathing exercises, secretion removal techniques etc and early bedside and out of bed ambulation are proven to be effective and are a part of the post op management protocol of standard physiotherapy or  usual care routinely practiced everywhere.

There have been studies done on effect of mindfulness meditation in Myocardial infarction patients, in patients with chronic pain , in patients with anxiety/depressionand even in normal healthy individuals. There are a few studies done to check effect of MM on joint surgeries, oncology patients and gynecological surgeries. Few studies are found seeing effect of MM on acute post op pain. However there is paucity of literature in checking effect of MM in post elective CABG patients functional recovery.

This study therefore aims to fill this gap by checking the effect of a holistic mind body intervention with standard  physiotherapy in CABG patients in view of assessing the effect of a holistic intervention.