Animal assisted intervention for oncology and palliative care patients: A systematic review

Introduction: Animal assisted interventions (AAI) have been used in different contexts including oncology/ palliative care and can improve mood, quality of life and wellness. The goal of this review was to evaluate studies about AAI and its effects on oncological/palliative care patients. Methods: The search was conducted on PubMed, Scopus and Lilacs databases. The inclusion criteria were original articles that measured quantitatively the health-related outcomes of an AAI on oncological/palliative care patients. Results: Ten studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Benefits related to the AAI were described. Mood, pain perception and quality of life seemed to be the variables that had improvement with the intervention. Due to the small sample sizes/heterogeneous methodologies, additional analyses could not be performed. Conclusions: AAI can be an important tool for improving psychosocial/physiological parameters in cancer/ palliative care patients. Further well designed studies are needed to provide a better knowledge of the AAI benefits in this setting.