Ted Jones, PhD from the Behavioral Medicine Institute at Pain Consultants of East Tennessee, recently provided his thoughts about the use of virtual reality software to combat chronic pain in a MedScape.com article entitled “Virtual Reality “Ventures Into Real World of Chronic Pain”.
Here is a portion of that article:
“Virtual reality (VR), already shown to have important benefits in the treatment of acute and procedural pain, shows preliminary evidence of also reducing symptoms in chronic pain, according to new research.
“Our pain providers desperately need effective nonopioid treatments for chronic pain, ones that patients will adopt and use,” Ted Jones, PhD, from the Behavioral Medicine Institute at Pain Consultants of East Tennessee, in Knoxville, told Medscape Medical News.
“Virtual reality offers very good analgesia in a way that could be easy and motivating for chronic pain patients to adopt and use on a daily basis.”
The immersive 3-dimensional technology has been shown to have a powerful effect in distracting patients in acute pain situations, such as in burn units, or after painful procedures, more so than observed in playing video games or passive TV or movie viewing.
However, VR use in chronic pain has not been well documented, with just one other early study from Belgium looking at the effects.
Because the technology has been prohibitively expensive, its use has mainly been restricted to hospitals, but the introduction of new, more affordable technology is extending reach to the outpatient setting.
For the new research, presented here at the American Pain Society (APS) 35th Annual Scientific Meeting, Dr Jones and colleagues worked with DeepStreamVR, the creators of the VR program, called “Cool!,” to test its efficacy on patients.
They conducted two studies, the first involving 30 patients with a variety of chronic nonmalignant paint conditions receiving a single-treatment, 5-minute session. Participants had a median age of 50 years and included 10 men and 20 women.
In that study, 9 patients reported 100% pain relief, while 3 reported no pre–post pain relief. Patients’ pain scores decreased by an average of 33% from before to after the session (P < .001) and decreased 60% from presession to during the session (P < .001).”
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