Effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy on pain in children: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Yuanyuan Zhang, Fanghong Yan, Sijun Li and 2 others
PMID 33575442WHAT IT FOUND
Dog-assisted therapy lowered children's pain scores across seven trials, but did not clearly reduce children's or parents' anxiety.
Physiological measures were inconsistent, and the evidence base was small and mixed quality.
Key findings
01Animal-assisted therapy reduced children's pain scores compared with control groups across 7 trials.
02On the pain scales used, the mean difference favouring animal-assisted therapy was −0.53.
03Anxiety did not significantly differ between groups for children or parents.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Only 7 trials with 236 children were included, so the estimate is based on a small evidence base. Only Chinese and English studies were searched, so relevant trials in other languages may have been missed. Outcome measures and study objects varied, making some results hard to pool. Several trials had unclear or high risk of bias, including problems with blinding and incomplete data. The anxiety and physiological results were null or inconsistent, so they should not be treated as reliable secondary findings.
Declared interests
Funded by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (grant No. 71704071). The authors declared no competing interests.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that animal-assisted therapy is proven to reduce anxiety or vital signs. The anxiety results were not significant, and the physiological findings were inconsistent across a small number of trials.