A Pet-type robot (AIBO, Sony Inc. Japan) is expected to serve to maintain and improve quality of life among patients or handicaps. We examine the usefulness of pet-type robots among elderly patients or handicaps in nursing home or at home by the biochemical marker, self-assessmenf or some health-related QOL questionnaires. The activities with pet-type robots were regularly carried out for 7 weeks to enhance Quality of Life (QOL) for Japanese elderly people. In activity evaluation, the scores of the items of "Utterance", "Demonstrative Language" and "Satisfaction" obtained at the last activity significantly increased compared with those at the initial activity.The scores of AOK Loneliness Scale obtained after activities (l.OW1.26) were significantly lower than those obtained before activities (3.33zt2.16). According to SF-36, the scores of Role-physical after activities significantly increased compared with those before activities. Salivary Chromogranin A (CgA), which correlated with the changes of catecholamine concentration, significantly decreased immediately after activities compared with that immediately before activities.

The purpose of this study is to clarify the characteristics of patients with decreased cognitive function undergoing treatment for acute exacerbation phase of chronic heart failure as a basic survey with a view to the standardization of nursing to prevent discontinuation of treatment of patients with declining cognitive function in the acute exacerbation phase of chronic heart failure. As the first stage of the research, using the interview guide created based on the background of discontinuation of treatment and symptomatic monitoring from 33 target literature sources, seven certified chronic heart failure nurses and 15 certified dementia nurses were given semi-structured interviews. Data obtained from the interviews was analyzed by qualitative induction. As a result, we obtained opinions/views on 8 situations namely, "cognitive function at hospitalization", "characteristics at hospitalization, "characteristics when receiving examinations, procedures or treatment", "characteristics of course of treatment", "characteristics related to difficulties in grasping the symptoms of chronic heart failure and indices of deterioration", "characteristics when using diuretics", "characteristics concerning compliance with dietary restrictions" and "support required for discharge from hospital" concerning patients with declining cognitive function. In the future, it is necessary to prepare nursing protocols incorporating these contents for standardization of nursing.