Animal-Assisted Therapy Decreases Patient Anxiety in Pre-MRI Setting

Patients who undergo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning frequently suffer from elevated anxiety. Patient discomfort may cause poor image quality due to motion artifacts or early termination. Anxiolytic medications are currently used to reduce this anticipated anxiety, but animal-assisted therapy may become an alternative treatment with fewer adverse effects.

The research's findings were presented at the 2011 American Roentgen Ray Society's annual meeting, held May 1-6, 2011, in Chicago (IL, USA). The project was conceived by a 15-year-old high student Allison Ruchman. During the course of her MRI scan, she experienced anxiety and claustrophobia. She relieved her tension by creating a mental image of her dog, Wally, and believed that her experience could be applicable to other patients who often need antianxiety drugs in order to complete the examination. Allison soon became a certified dog therapist, and conducted the research on this project, helping physicians who collected and analyzed data, and prepared an abstract of the study.

The study was conducted at Monmouth Medical Center (Long Branch, NJ, USA), and 28 patients who were scheduled to undergo outpatient MRI were selected for an intervention with a certified therapy dog. Patients interacted with the therapy dog at various levels of intensity for periods of 15 minutes, about 30 minutes before their scheduled MRI scan. Six patients underwent no intervention for the same period of time without a therapy dog.

"The most significant aspect of our findings was the fact that time spent with a dog [animal-assisted therapy] could substitute for pharmacologic anxiolysis often needed to assist patients having an MRI," said Richard Ruchman, MD, one of the authors of the study. "A great deal of research is currently being conducted on animal assisted therapy in the medical environment. To my knowledge, this is the first study that has particularly addressed animal-assisted therapy in the radiology department, and I believe that many applications of could flow from our findings. Current estimates are that 15% or more of patients cannot proceed with an MRI due to anxiety and a nonpharmacologic solution is noteworthy," said Dr. Ruchman.

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