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Hospital using Troutman chairs to see if rocking helps recovery

Jay McIntosh -- Furniture Today, January 30, 2012

Troutman Chair has published this 4-by-6-inch booklet describing the health and wellness benefits of using rocking chairs, for use as POP materials at retailers.TROUTMAN, N.C. - Furniture manufacturer Troutman Chair has shipped a dozen of its rocking chairs to a Connecticut hospital for a study on whether rocking helps patients recover from surgery.
     Champ Land, president of Troutman Chair, said he proposed the study to Waterbury Hospital's chief of surgery three years ago.
     "He told me to keep bugging him about it, and I've been in contact with him about every six months," said Land.
Dr. Scott Kurtzman, director of the Yale-affiliated Waterbury, Conn., hospital's General Surgery Residency Program, has now designed a study that will measure whether patients who use rocking chairs during their recovery will fare better than those who don't.
     Kurtzman's hypothesis is that patients who use rocking chairs will have quicker return of bowel function, require less narcotic pain relief, have better mood and anxiety scores, have fewer cases of deep vein thrombosis or DVT, and will have a shorter length of stay.
     The study, which is expected to take a year, will measure the results of patients who use the rockers against a control group of patients who don't.
   Land has long promoted the health benefits of rocking. Troutman maintains a website, www.rockingchairtherapy.org, that tells about a number of studies that have already been done that indicate that rocking is beneficial. One of the company's products is nicknamed the "Kennedy rocker" because it's the chair that former President John F. Kennedy used as therapy for the back injury he suffered in World War II.
     The North Carolina manufacturer also has published a booklet summarizing the information, for use as point-of-purchase materials at retailers to help salespeople and be informative to consumers. The publication calls the rocking chair "the only piece of furniture where bodies in motion tend to stay at rest."
     "Procter & Gamble research has proven a 10% sales increase when you can apply a healthful benefit to a product. Notice all the info on all P&G products," Land said.

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