A trip to the emergency department naturally causes stress and anxiety in children and their parents, but a new study published by a Wayne State University School of Medicine physician has found that interaction with therapy dogs in the emergency room significantly lowers stress levels.

“Effectiveness of therapy dogs to reduce anxiety in children in the emergency department: A randomized clinical trial,” published today on JAMA Network Open, was led by Jeffrey Kline, M.D., professor and associate chair of Research in the WSU Department of Emergency Medicine.

Fear and pain greatly exacerbate stress levels in nearly all pediatric patients who need to be treated in emergency departments. In fact, about 15 percent of children require chemical or physical interventions to allow care to continue. That, in turn, also stresses parents of young patients.

But the use of therapy dogs in emergency departments, said Dr. Kline, the study’s principal investigator, reduces stress levels in both child patients and their parents.

“We found that implementation of therapy dog visits has the potential to reduce fear and anxiety in children and their parents, and improve their overall emergency department experience, which has the potential to improve outcomes in a low-cost, low-risk way,” he said.

A total of 80 patients aged 5 to 17 were enrolled in the study. They all received standard child-life therapy, with the intervention group of 40 randomly assigned to exposure to a therapy dog-handler team for approximately ten minutes. Anxiety was measured using the FACES scale (using simple face images to indicate pain on a scale of one to 10) and salivary cortisol concentrations. Cortisol is a hormone released into the bloodstream by the adrenal glands during times of stress. Measurements were obtained at baseline, forty-five minutes after the therapy dog interaction and 120 minutes after the interaction.

Forty-six percent of children in the therapy dog group saw a decrease in anxiety scores compared to 23% in the control group. In addition, 55% of children in the control group received ketamine, midazolam or droperidol to treat anxiety and allow care to proceed, while just 35% of children in the therapy dog intervention group received the drugs, a clinically-significant reduction in medications used to treat severe anxiety, Dr. Kline said.

“Therapy animal-handler teams are deployed in hospitals across the country to provide comfort to patients across all age ranges,” said C. Annie Peters, president of Pet Partners. “These new findings go one step further in documenting how therapy animals improve medical outcomes.”

“This high-quality research provides clinically-relevant data for medical professionals, elevating the role of the human-animal bond as a complementary therapy in the practice of medicine,” said Steven Feldman, president of the Human Animal Bond Research Institute.

Other members of the study team include Heather Kelker, M.D., assistant professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine, and Huma Siddiqui, M.D., research coordinator at the Indiana University School of Medicine Department of Emergency Medicine; and Alan Beck, ScD, professor emeritus of Human Animal Bond at the Purdue University School of Veterinary Medicine.

The study was funded by grant HAB20-007 from the Human Animal Bond Research Institute in conjunction with Wayne State University.