October 02, 2007
Virtual Reality for Burn Patients
Distracting burn patients while clinicians attend to a patients’ wounds, can make a significant difference in their ability to manage pain. Rather than traditional distractions, such as books and music, doctors and nurses at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, are using virtual realilty to allow patients to escape into a computer-generated world complete with its own environment, creatures and sounds.
Patients wear a virtual reality helmet and they interact in the virtual environment with the help of child life specialists, trained to assist kids through stressful medical treatments.
According to psychologst Catherine Butz, at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, "it’s long been known that the actual treatment for a burn is far worse than the actual injury. Initially, the wound has to be cleaned and the dressing applied, and that can be a very painful and lengthy procedure. Research shows a very strong connection between anxiety and pain -- distraction does a great job in decreasing any kind of anxiety that might be associated with the anticipated procedures, so by distracting patients and keeping anxiety at a minimum, procedures tend to go much more smoothly and be much less painful for the child."
In order to better understand the effect on pain, doctors at Nationwide Children's have launched a study to compare the results of virtual reality pain distraction with traditional distraction techniques, such as watching television, listening to music, counting and deep breathing. Patients will be randomly assigned to receive virtual reality or another pain distraction technique. Following the procedure, they will be asked to gauge their level of pain on a scale of zero to 10. The study will also assess the perspectives of parents and nurses in terms of the child's pain and level of distress.
The burn program's goal is to be able to better engage the child in a distraction activity which will hopefully have a beneficial affect on the procedure. An added benefit for patients may be a decrease in the amount of pain and anxiety medications needed. However doctors point out that pain is a very individual experience, and the benefits of virtual reality distraction as well as the level of medication must be determined on a case by case basis.
Nationwide Children's Hospital
Columbus, OH
Related articles:
Computer-Generated Virtual Reality to Control Pain and Anxiety in Pediatric and Adult Burn Patients During Wound Dressing Changes
J Burn Care Res. 2007
Application of a virtual reality prototype for pain relief of pediatric burn in Taiwan
Virtual Reality Pain Distraction
Bulletin of the American Pain Society
Research uncovers virtual pain relief for children
HIT Labs and Snow World - VR for Pain
Scientific American
Virtual-Reality Therapy