MedPage Today April 12, 2024
— VR distraction therapy could be a useful non-pharmacologic alternative, study suggests
Immersive virtual reality (VR) as distraction therapy provided relief for hospitalized cancer patients with moderate to severe pain, a single-center randomized trial showed.
Among patients with pain related to their malignancy or treatment, a 10‐minute VR intervention — where users can explore natural environments like beaches or forests — led to clinically and statistically significant reductions in self-reported pain scores compared with an active control, reported researchers led by Hunter Groninger, MD, of the MedStar Health Research Institute and Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., in Cancer.
Immediately after the intervention, data analysis of 127 randomized patients showed an average decrease of 1.4 points in the...
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