Virtual Reality as an Adjunctive Non-pharmacologic Analgesic for Acute Burn Pain During Medical Procedures

• Published in: Annals of behavioral medicine Vol. 41; no. 2; pp. 183 - 191
• Main Authors: Hoffman, Hunter G., Chambers, Gloria T., Meyer, Walter J., Arceneaux, Lisa L., Russell, William J., Seibel, Eric J., Richards, Todd L., Sharar, Sam R., Patterson, David R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer-Verlag 01-04-2011; Oxford University Press
• Subjects: Analgesia - methods; Analgesics; Attention - physiology; Brain; Brain - physiopathology; Burn treatment; Burns - complications; Burns - physiopathology; Burns - therapy; Family Medicine; General Practice; Health Psychology; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Original Article; Pain - complications; Pain Management; User-Computer Interface; Virtual reality; Analgesia; Virtual reality; Pain distraction
• ISSN: 0883-6612; 1532-4796
• DOI: 10.1007/s12160-010-9248-7

Introduction
Excessive pain during medical procedures is a widespread problem but is especially problematic during daily wound care of patients with severe burn injuries.
Methods
Burn patients report 35–50% reductions in procedural pain while in a distracting immersive virtual reality, and fMRI brain scans show associated reductions in pain-related brain activity during VR. VR distraction appears to be most effective for patients with the highest pain intensity levels. VR is thought to reduce pain by directing patients’ attention into the virtual world, leaving less attention available to process incoming neural signals from pain receptors.
Conclusions
We review evidence from clinical and laboratory research studies exploring Virtual Reality analgesia, concentrating primarily on the work ongoing within our group. We briefly describe how VR pain distraction systems have been tailored to the unique needs of burn patients to date, and speculate about how VR systems could be tailored to the needs of other patient populations in the future.