Visits from certified therapy dogs help adult cancer patients going through chemotherapy and radiation. Such visits are already commonplace in cancer centers and are generally considered pleasant, but a study has just found that they actually help the well-being of patients who are being treated for cancer.
Patients being treated for head and neck cancer increased their scores for emotional well-being because of the visits from the therapy dogs.
Researchers at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan studied 37 patients who consented to having visits from therapy dogs when they came in for chemotherapy or radiation treatments for head and neck cancer. At the start of the study and twice more during their treatment, they filled out a questionnaire about their quality of life that is specific to cancer treatment. This questionnaire evaluated their personal, social, emotional, and functional well-being. They also filled out another questionnaire every other week about the animal therapy sessions.
Each patient received a visit from a team consisting of a therapy dog and the dog's volunteer handler at each appointment for treatment. The dogs were bathed before each visit and their paws were wiped before they entered the waiting room. The patient could interact with the dog by talking to it, petting it, or playing with it.
As expected, the scores for physical and functional well-being declined as the chemotherapy and radiation treatments took their toll on the patients. But the emotional well-being scores went up significantly. During the course of the cancer treatments, the patients also increased the scores they gave in judging how helpful to them the animal visits were.
One limitation to this finding is that there was no control group of patients who were not visited by a therapy dog.
All of the therapy dogs in this study were trained by and certified with the Good Dog Foundation, which supported this research with a grant.
