[Evaluation of animal-assisted therapy for the elderly with senile dementia in a day care program]

We conducted animal-assisted therapy (AAT) for the elderly with senile dementia in a day care center. AAT was performed between July 27 and October 12, 1999 for a total of six biweekly sessions. The AAT group consisted of 7 subjects; 5 with senile dementia of Alzheimer's type (SDAT) and 2 with vascular dementia (VD). The control group was 20 elderly subjects (7 SDAT, 13 VD). The results were as follows: Comparing between MMS scores at the baseline and those three months later, the average score on MMS before AAT (baseline) was 11.43 (+/- 9.00), and that three months later was 12.29 (+/- 9.69). In the AAT group, the average baseline N-ADL score was 28.43 (+/- 14.00) and that after ATT was 29.57 (+/- 14.47). In the AAT group, the average baseline score on Behave-AD was 11.14 (+/- 4.85), and that three months after AAT was 7.29 (+/- 7.11) (p < 0.05). In the control group, the average baseline score was 5.45 (+/- 3.27) and that three month later was 5.63 (+/- 3.59). However, the results of eight subscales of communication behavior three months later were significantly low comparing to those at the baseline in the control group. The evaluation of CgA, which was a mental stress index, showed a decreasing tendency in the AAT group. Our findings suggested we should use several evaluation methods for evaluation of the changes of patients receiving AAT.