Children and teenagers with pneumonia seem to spend less time in hospital if they are visited by a medical clown, who helps to reduce their heart rates and encourage independence.

Visits from a medical clown, who may help children role-play or distract them during treatments, have previously been linked to reduced stress and anxiety among young people in hospital.

Now, Karin Yaacoby-Bianu at the Carmel Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, and her colleagues have specifically studied their effect among children who were hospitalised with pneumonia, which is inflammation of the lungs.

The team randomly assigned 26 children and teenagers, aged 2 to 18, with pneumonia to be visited by medical clowns for 15 minutes, twice a day, up to two days after they arrived at the centre. Another 25 children and teenagers received the same care, but weren’t visited by clowns.

The clowns sang and played music with the participants, and encouraged them to eat and drink by themselves. “They were initially receiving fluids and nutrients through tubes,” says Yaacoby-Bianu.

Keep reading at newscientist.com.

Dr. Karin Yaacoby-Bianu is a lecturer in the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion.