What happens next: The lingering effects of child abuse in a Mexican cohort.

Cancer treatment is frequently accompanied by psychological distress, anxiety, uncertainty, and treatment-related symptom burden. These difficulties may be particularly relevant during active systemic therapy, when patients are repeatedly exposed to hospital environments, intravenous treatment procedures, waiting time, and concerns regarding disease course and treatment tolerance [,]. In this context, supportive oncology increasingly emphasizes the importance of addressing patient-reported symptoms and emotional wellbeing alongside disease-directed treatment [,]. Outpatient and day chemotherapy units represent clinically demanding settings in which supportive interventions must be brief, feasible, safe, and compatible with routine care. Patients receiving chemotherapy in these settings may experience anxiety before or during treatment, while also reporting physical symptoms such as dyspnea, fatigue, or general discomfort [,]. Because time and staffing resources are often limited, short patient-reported assessment tools may be useful for capturing immediate changes in symptom intensity. Numerical rating scales from 0 to 10 have been widely used in cancer symptom assessment because they are simple, rapid, and suitable for repeated measurements in clinical settings []. Animal-assisted interventions, including therapy dog visits, have been introduced in healthcare environments as non-pharmacological supportive interventions. These interventions are generally based on structured or semi-structured interaction with trained animals and handlers, with the aim of improving emotional comfort, reducing distress, and enhancing the patient experience [,]. In oncology, animal-assisted interventions have been studied across heterogeneous clinical populations and settings, including adult patients receiving intensive oncological treatment, pediatric oncology patients, palliative care populations, outpatient cancer populations, and mixed cancer samples [,]. Existing evidence suggests that such interventions are generally acceptable to patients and may be associated with improvements in mood, anxiety, distress, perceived wellbeing, and treatment experience [,].