Introduction
VR or ‘Virtual Reality’ is a fully immersive technology that allows a person to be fully engaged in virtual reality, that is through sound, sight, tactile and olfactory senses. The VR headset has this tracking system within it so that when you put on the headset it follows the head movements of the user making it feel as though they are truly there in the virtual reality. An example of places VR is used in are video games. Let’s say you are playing a racing game using VR. You will see the steering wheel in front of you, the blue sky above you, the buildings and landscape surrounding you, the roar of the car engines of the other players around you and feel the rush of adrenaline making it feels as though you were truly there—in that car, racing.
VR is a newly researched form of pain management. It is used as a type of non-pharmacologic form of pain management drug or analgesic that isn’t actually a drug and according to clinical trials it acts as such. Experiments using VR have been done and the patients and participants have reported reduced feelings of pain, discomfort and distress. These participants also say that they desire to continue using VR in the future for managing their pain levels in clinical settings as it has yielded appealing results.
In this article, I will be discussing the continued research done on VR for acute and chronic pain management, the results it has yielded, and the future implications for VR and medicine.
History
VR technology first started being used in medicine back in the 1990s. At the time, it was used by healthcare professionals to visualize complex medical data while they were planning complex surgical procedures and treatment. Due to the effectiveness that VR showed back then, it has since been applied to other parts of the medical field such as further training in surgical proceedings, neuropsychiatry, rehabilitation, and acute and chronic pain management.(Teh, J. J., Pascoe, D. J., Hafeji, S., Parchure, R., Koczoski, A., Rimmer, M. P., Khan, K. S., & Wattar, B. H. A.)
The VR technologies used in the past had a lot of limits that did not allow us to easily use them in all medical practices. They were very large, they were quite expensive, and had a very complex operating system that was not very user friendly making it very hard for the users to even figure out how to use it in the first place or feel comfortable with continuous use. Now though, the VR technologies have been modified and amplified so that they are compact enough for us to be able to use them in different clinical settings. They are also very user friendly, easy to understand and used a lot without feeling too overwhelmed by its way too complex usability.
VR for Pain Management
VR for Acute Pain
VR technology has been researched and experimented a good couple of times by a lot of different people. One group of people that have been experimented on a lot in regards to VR, are burn survivors. Some common testing done is to give one group of burn survivors just analgesic and another a mix of analgesic and VR technology. The things they show on the VR to the patients also are recorded. A couple of experiments displayed things that would distract the patients, such as a game that would need just enough concentration to distract them. On the other hand, some other experiments showed some relaxants such as meditation with relaxing background music.
All these different variations of using VR in the treatments of the burn patients were administered to people of multiple different ages. According to all of the research done, nearly all the experiments came out with the same results. The results being that if you administer an analgesic whilst a VR is being used, the patients, of all different ages, all agree to the fact that the pain levels are reduced. Not only are the pain levels reduced but also the anxiety and feelings of distraught that accompany treatment. The only instance in which the VR didn’t help or caused even more negative feelings is when the VR was used as a relaxant with meditation music.
Another area in which VR has been used is in the reduction of pain whilst undergoing various cancer treatments. It has been tested with children and adults. A group of children were given chemotherapy treatments with the use of VR while another group were given the treatment without the VR. The group that used the VR reported to have had less pain, anxiety, and discomfort while in treatment compared to the other group. Another study was done in which a couple of adolescents receiving chemotherapy were given the VR to use and after the experiment most of them reported to have felt less pain overall whilst using the VR.
While all these studies gave us similar results between all age groups, another common denominator is that even though pain, anxiety and discomfort were overall reduced, it wasn’t all that much of a significant amount. (Li, A., Montaño, Z., Chen, V. J., Gold, J. I.)
The use of VR has been studied on a multitude of other more routine medical procedures. A group of multiple children treated using VR were grouped into 5. They included ones treated without VR or distractions, ones treated with VR showcasing cartoons, ones treated with VR via computer, ones treated with VR via head mounted display (HMD) and ones treated with VR and an analgesic. Between these groups there seemed to have been no major differences in terms of the pain and anxiety felt, but it has been reported that the group with VR via HMD had a lower frequency of pain compared with the other groups. Another thing noticed is that whilst all the groups treated with any sort of VR didn’t have any differences of pain levels between themselves, there were major differences between the VR groups and the group with no VR. The group with no VR experienced significantly higher levels of pain compared to all the other VR groups.
VR for Chronic Pain
Virtual reality hypnosis(VRH) is another type of VR being studied for pain management, and this particular one is studied for chronic pain management. Ordinary hypnosis without VR is already used in so many things including pain management in medical treatments so it only made sense to also try and see how effective VRH could be considering other forms of VR have been very helpful with managing all sorts of pain experienced during treatment.
A 6 month study was conducted on a woman with chronic pain. For 6 months she was rendered VRH as a pain manager. By the end of the study it was found that she felt a reduced amount of pain by 36% and the feeling of discomfort reduced by 33%. Prior to the VRH experience she was using regular hypnosis as a pain manager and so the findings in her previous hypnosis treatments were compared to her new VRH ones. While regular hypnosis resulted in 1 hour of pain reduction and 0 hours of being pain free right after the hypnosis, VRH on the other hand resulted in 8.5 hours of reduced pain and 4.3 hours of being completely pain free right after the hypnosis. Though there hasn’t been much research and experimentation done on VR and chronic pain management, ones like the one mentioned above and the few others that have been done have yielded promising results for the future of chronic pain management with the use of VR.
Concerns
With every new scientific discovery, there will always be many good concerns that mustn’t be overlooked. One major concern that came up with the use of VR for pain management has been the fear that with time and continuous use, patients may become almost immune to the positive effects of the VR technologies. An experiment was done where overtime VR was used on a number of adults for pain management. The results showed that the use of VR significantly increased the pain tolerance, decreased anxiety and time spent thinking about the pain for these individuals. The results of a long term study conducted on burn survivors was also taken and with the results of these 2 studies and a couple others, it showed that the results of the VR on managing the patients pain levels stayed quite consistent throughout the whole of the study. This shows that there doesn’t seem to be any negative effects of using the VR technologies for pain management and that the effects will not dissipate because of long term use.
Conclusion
Although in the past VR has been used primarily for gaming, these past few years, its use has been extended to other fields of study. Using VR in medical treatments has shown to be quite reliable in managing pain, anxiety and comfort levels. Healthcare workers have also stated that VR has been rather helpful in speeding up the treatment process for patients as they are less anxious about the whole process, they are distracted, they move less so there are fewer attempts at getting the drugs administered to the proper location in the body and an overall smoother experience for everyone involved.
Even though we have come so far from the past in which VR was really expensive, not readily available to the majority of the public, and not easy to use, there is still a lot more research and work to be done so that we can yield the maximum advantage that VR has to offer. There is still a lot more research to be done in terms of chronic pain management, as it is majorly understudied and direly needed by many individuals. Even though there hasn’t been enough research done on VR yet, it does seem that with time and many different people coming together to experiment and study, there will be quite a bright future. Whether the VR is being administered with an analgesic or used completely on its own, it seems pain will be much more manageable in the near future.
Bibliography
Li, A., Montaño, Z., Chen, V. J., & Gold, J. I. (2011, March 1). Virtual reality and pain management: current trends and future directions.
Godman, H. (2022, April 1). Virtual reality for chronic pain relief. Harvard Health.
Teh, J. J., Pascoe, D. J., Hafeji, S., Parchure, R., Koczoski, A., Rimmer, M. P., Khan, K. S., & Wattar, B. H. A. (2024, February 14). Efficacy of virtual reality for pain relief in medical procedures: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Li, A., Montaño, Z., Chen, V. J., Gold, J. I. (2011, March). Virtual Reality and Pain Management: Current Trends and Future Directions.
Groninger, H., Violanti, D., & Mete, M. (2024, April 8). Virtual reality for pain management in hospitalized patients with cancer: A randomized controlled trial.
