Increasing the amount of sunlight in a patient’s hospital room reduces their “perception of pain and their need for analgesic medication,” according to a new report.

Dr. James D. Kang, of the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues, enrolled 89 patients who had undergone spinal surgery into their study. Patients were randomly assigned to hospital rooms that were sunny or dim upon their return from surgery.

Measurements with a light meter showed that patients in the bright rooms received an average of 46 percent more natural sunlight per day than those in the dim rooms, the researchers explain in the medical journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

Those in the dim rooms required more opioid-type drugs on each day of their stay, averaging 28 percent more per hour. This translated to an average 21 percent reduction in the cost of painkiller medication for patients in the bright rooms.

The team also found that patients in the bright rooms had significantly lower stress scores and marginally lower pain scores when they left the hospital than did the patients in the dimmer rooms.

“These results may encourage hospital administrators to relocate patient populations with high analgesic requirements to units with higher intensity sunlight,” Kang and his associates suggest.

SOURCE: Psychosomatic Medicine, January/February 2005.