Clown visits may shorten the time children spend in the hospital.

Children and adolescents with pneumonia who receive a visit from a health professional have a shorter hospital stay. The health professional helps lower their heart rate and builds independence.

Visits by medical clowns to assist with role-playing or distraction during treatment have previously been linked to: Reducing stress and anxiety in adolescents in hospital.

now, Karin Yaakovi-Bianu Researchers at Carmel Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, and her colleagues studied the drug’s effects specifically in children hospitalized with pneumonia, an inflammation of the lungs.

The team randomly assigned 26 children and adolescents, ages 2 to 18, with pneumonia to receive 15-minute visits twice a day for up to two days after a medical clown arrived at the center. Another 25 children and adolescents received the same treatment but did not receive clown visits.

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

The team found that those who received clown visits stayed in the center for an average of 44 hours, while those who did not receive clown visits were admitted to hospital for 70 hours. The results were presented at the European Respiratory Society Congress in Vienna, Austria.

Doctors who didn’t know which patients had received clown therapy decided when to discharge them based on improvements in their breathing, heart rate, and ability to eat and drink on their own, the latter indicating that they could take antibiotic tablets at home instead of having to get the drugs intravenously, Yaacoby-Bianu said.

The clowns probably helped the participants recover through play. It can lower blood pressureSay Kelsey Graver “Play can also improve young people’s sense of wellbeing, mood, energy levels, body confidence and abilities,” she says, from the University of Cambridge.

Graeber said researchers should repeat the study on a larger scale with children and adolescents with other conditions at other hospitals.