Animal Therapy and Heart Failure
http://ajcc.aacnjournals.org/content/16/6/575.short#cited-by
Attached above is an interesting scholarly article providing evidence on whether or not animal assisted therapy aids patients who have heart failure. An experiment was done in an attempt to conclude that “Animal-assisted therapy improves cardiopulmonary pressures, neurohormone levels, and anxiety in patients hospitalized with heart failure” (Cole et al., 2018). Experimenters randomly assigned seventy-six adults with heart failure into three separate groups of people. The first group was the dog group—volunteer and therapy dog come to visit patient for twelve minutes. The second group received a visit from only the volunteer, no dog; the third group continued treatment as normal. The results showed that “…the volunteer-dog group had the greatest decrease from baseline in state anxiety sum score compared with the volunteer-only…and the control groups…” (Cole et al,. 2018). Senior year of high school, I took AP Statistics and we had to find the results and the significance of information. It is extremely difficult to prove something statistically significant. The p-value must be <.05 or <.01 to be considered significant. In this study, all of the p-values calculated were less than .05 and most of them were less than .01. These statistics prove that there is a significant improvement in “…cardiopulmonary pressures, neurohormone levels, and anxiety in patients hospitalized with heart failure” (Cole et al., 2018). This study shows that dogs are not only used for companionship or for mental illnesses; dogs are able to physically help an individual who is suffering from heart related problems. Studies have also shown that human-dog interactions can increase the “mood-boosting” hormones such as oxytocin and dopamine as well as decrease the stress hormone known as cortisol. Although these effects of human and animal interactions through therapy, emotional support or service are still being studied, there are many studies that have shown significant effects, as well as studies that did not find significant effects. Even if experimenters do not conclude with a significant value in their study, it does not mean that the original hypothesis is untrue or false.













