November 17, 2005--Dr. Spot

Now I’m learning that dogs are more than Man’s Best Friend. They are also Man’s Best Doctor.

The NY Times reported the other day about a study that revealed that when dogs were allowed to visit hospitalized patients who are critically ill with advanced heart disease, their levels of measurable anxiety dropped 24 percent, as compared with anxiety declines associated with visits by volunteers (10 percent), and of course not at all for someone without any visitors. This is significant because anxiety impedes recovery.

As a former pre-med, I was (1) not surprised by these results, but (2) had a number of questions both about the methodology and limits of the study.

First of all, missing from the study entirely is the effect on patient anxiety by visits from family members—they measured the impact of visits by just dogs and non-family volunteers. What do you suppose they would have found if they had included data from visits by spouses, children, or in-law?? I suspect there could easily have been an increase in anxiety. After all, how did the patients wind up in the hospital in the first place? How many people, for example, experience heart fibulations after a long day at the Thanksgiving table, to make a seasonal reference? And, again as a lapsed former doctor-in-training, I also offer this as a cautionary suggestion.

And why did the study over-privilege dogs? What about the effects of cats or parakeets or gold fish? I find contemplating a bowl of guppies to be very therapeutic. And wouldn’t it be more practical to have fish tanks in the ICU than beagles?

Furthermore, have they studied the effects of plants and flowers on patient progress? If they don’t work, why not report that so we could save ourselves a lot of money when visiting friends in the hospital?

So you see, there is more work to do.

Imbedded in the Times piece was something equally intriguing. In a separate study reported at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association, “Scientists [German scientists] found that riding roller coasters may set off dangerously abnormal heart rhythms in people with heart disease.” Now that’s a big surprise. I want to know who funded this study (surely not Great Adventure) and how much it cost, because I have something else I want to research and could use some funding—

What’s the effect on the heart when reading about Scooter Libby or Tom Delay or Judge Alito or the new prescription drug “benefit” or . . . .

I need to stop; my pulse rate is approaching 220.