Study results suggest that taking a friend or relative flowering plants or flowers when they are in hospital could aid their recovery.
Seong-Hyun Park and Richard Mattson from Kansas State University set out to discover whether contact with plants brought any therapeutic benefits to patients recovering from abdominal surgery. To do this they studied 90 patients who were recovering from an appendectomy were randomly assigned to a hospital room with or without plants for their post-surgery recovery.
Results showed that patients with plants in their rooms used significantly less pain relief, had lower blood pressure and heart rate, reported experiencing less pain, fatigue, and anxiety, and were more satisfied with their rooms than patients allocated rooms without plants.
The authors concluded: “Findings of this research suggested that plants in a hospital environment could be noninvasive, inexpensive, and an effective complementary medicine for patients recovering from abdominal surgery.”
Park SH, Mattson RH. Effects of Flowering and Foliage Plants in Hospital Rooms on Patients Recovering from Abdominal Surgery. HortTechnology 2008;18:549-745.
News release: Flowering plants speed post-surgery recovery. American Society for Horticultural Science. December 29th 2008.
