Hospitals are using virtual reality to aid patient’s pain
According to a study published in Current Biology in May of 2012, mental distraction makes pain easier to process and endure. The findings of the study, based on high-resolution spinal MRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) as people experienced painful levels of heat, show that mental distractions actually inhibit the response to incoming pain signals at the earliest stage of central pain processing.
For this reasons, and taking into consideration the fact that virtual reality is becoming more and more affordable with time, hospitals are turning to VR to help their patients aid their pain and make their experience at the hospital a little more tolerable.
According to Bloomberg Technology, doctors at the Shriners Hospital for Children in Galveston, Texas, USA tested this with thirteen-year-old patient Deona Duke, who was in a terrible accident where a bonfire exploded on her and her friend, resulting in burns that covered a third of the girl’s body. Burn patients go through a significant amount of pain, since part of the treatment to avoid infections involves regularly changing the bandages and having the dead skin that forms scraped away.
Denoa’s doctors gave her a VR headset just before proceeding to clean her wounds. She was immersed in a snow world where she got to throw snowballs at penguins, effectively distracting her from the painful procedure. She commented “When I first tried it, it distracted me from what they were doing so it helped with the pain.”
This is still a very new and experimental procedure, but it is said it could be effective treatment for an array of conditions from burn wounds to Alzheimer’s disease to depression or any form of medical condition that involves intense pain.
