Study Identifies Heart Patient’s Best Friend

For people hospitalized with advanced heart disease, it is better to have visitors than to lie quietly alone. But one type of visitor seems to be especially beneficial, researchers reported on Tuesday.

That visitor is a dog.

In the first controlled study of the effects of pet therapy in a random sample of acute and critically ill heart patients, anxiety as measured on a standard rating scale dropped 24 percent for those visited by a dog and a human volunteer, by 10 percent for those visited by a volunteer alone and not at all for those with no visitors. Similar results were found in measures of heart and lung function.

The only question I have about this study is whether they identified patients as “dog lovers” or not. I know many people who do not like dogs while others love their dogs more than people. I suspect that if we go down this path, we should preidentify patients who might benefit as those who profess to like dogs.

The roller coaster study, conducted in Hassloch, Germany, involved 55 adults and Expedition GeForce, a 120-second ride that starts with a 203-foot ascent followed by a free fall. The coaster has changes in gravity of six G’s in four seconds, and a maximum speed of 75 miles an hour.

The author, Dr. Jürgen Kuschyk, a cardiologist at the University of Mannheim, found that one participant’s heart rate reached 200 beats a minute, which could cause dangerous rhythm abnormalities.

All participants were screened for heart disease before the experiment, and their heart rates were monitored throughout the ride. Heart rates appeared to rise more from psychological stress and fear at the beginning of the ride, rather than from the increased G force, Dr. Kuschyk said. After the ride, about half the participants had abnormal heartbeats even though their heart rates had returned to a normal range.

Dr. Kuschyk, whose main research field is sudden death, said his interest in roller coasters began when a journalist asked about their dangers on the heart. When he searched databases, he found no studies in scientific journals. His concerns rose as he learned that more roller coasters were being built in many countries to be taller and faster.

This makes sense. I personally do not ride roller coasters as I do not understand that type of thrill. I also avoid bungee jumping, parachuting, etc.

Back to the dog study

Besides the anxiety measurement, researchers found, patients’ levels of epinephrine, a hormone the body makes when under stress, dropped 17 percent when visited by a person and a dog, and 2 percent when visited by only a person. Epinephrine levels rose an average of 7 percent in the unvisited group in the study, which was financed by the Pet Care Trust Foundation, a nonprofit group.

Is that a conflict of interest? Should we believe the data given the funding source?

While the last paragraph is meant to be a bit sarcastic, we know that physicians discount the results of studies funded by pharmaceutical companies. I find the dog study interesting, but await confirmatory studies funded by impartial funding sources.

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