Virtually Pain Free! - Virtual Reality for Procedural Sedation and Analgesia
- Author Chandrasekhar Krishnamurti
- Co-Author Salehe Mrutu
- DOI https://ww
- Country : India
- Subject :
Keywords : Virtual reality, analgesia, procedural sedation, distraction
Abstract
The patient’s psychological state of mind can influence the dosage of sedatives needed to achieve the target sedation level. Since the greatest threat to the safety of a sedated patient is airway compromise and/or respiratory arrest, non-pharmacologic techniques have become popular in the pre-procedural and pre-operative areas to relieve parental and patient anxiety. They serve as useful adjuncts to promote anxiolysis, analgesia and sedation, and to reduce adverse events by reducing reliance on medications.
Traditional distraction techniques are moderately effective in pain reduction during procedures. A recent and significantly more powerful distraction with little or no side effects is immersive virtual reality (VR). VR distraction programs, both outside and inside the operating room can effectively improve patient satisfaction with anxiety-reduction, sedation-sparing and hemodynamic benefits in a variey of clinical applications.
Virtual reality (VR) is referred to as “distraction on steroids” is an advanced form of human-computer interface, where operators enter and interact with a highly naturalistic computer-generated environment. The convergence of multisensory input (sight, sound, touch) gives VR participants a strong illusion of ‘going into’ the computer-generated environment, a sensation known as ‘presence’ in the virtual environment. VR can, thereby, serve as a replacement to procedural sedation for both pediatric and adult population and offer important benefits. (1)
Over the last 15 years, the use of virtual reality (VR) has been utilized for various educational (computer assisted learning), training (simulation), and research purposes with nurses, physicians, and other healthcare providers. However, more recently, the technology has been modified for child and adult use in clinical settings. Many investigators have begun to use the technology to entertain, educate, and divert attention away from the associated symptoms of painful medical interventions
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