'Yoga speeds up post-surgery recovery'

LUDHIANA: Yoga does work. A large number of heart patients--who were told to practise pranayama, a yoga breathing technique--have shown a remarkable post-surgery recovery, claims a study conducted at a super-speciality hospital here.
"My patients were breathing much better and were weaned off the ventilator faster, said HS Bedi, an eminent cardiac surgeon who has conducted the research.He would be presenting a paper at 43rd annual meeting of society of thoracic surgeons to be held at San Diego US in January, 2007.
Dr SC Manchanda, former head of cardiology AIIMS New Delhi and a colleague of Dr Bedi has previously shown that yoga and lifestyle modification could reverse heart disease in the longer run, but the present observations here are probably the first to show that incidence of one of the most common complications--atelectasis and consolidation of lung--after surgery reduced to zero after pranayama.
Citing examples he said a patient from Abohar, Parmeshwari Devi (45) Abohar was taken off the ventilator within few hours. She was suffering from transposition of great arteries and her main valve was leaking. Similarly, Mukhtiar Singh (65) of Mannawala village in Amritsar had problem of lungs before the surgery.
He could without ventilator after 6 hours. Normally, patients are kept on ventilator for a 12 to 24 hours duration after surgery.
As many as 62 patients have been taught different breathing techniques by Krishan Gupta, Varinder Singh and Sadhana Makkar of Pitanjali Yog Peeth so far. Of these, preoperative patients were told to do exercises on the bed while for postoperative cases classes were held in a hall adjoining their ward.