Abstract
When undergo ambulatory surgical operations, the majority of patients experience high level of anxiety. Different experimental studies have shown that distraction techniques are effective in reducing pain and related anxiety. Since Virtual reality (VR) has been demonstrated a good distraction technique, it has been repeatedly used in hospital contexts for reducing pain in burned patients, but it has never been used during surgical operations. With the present randomized controlled study we intended to verify the effectiveness of VR in reducing anxiety in patients undergoing ambulatory operations under local or regional anaesthesia. In particular, we measured the degree to which anxiety associated with surgical intervention was reduced by distracting patients with immersive VR provided through a cell phone connected to an HMD compared to a no-distraction control condition. A significant reduction of anxiety was obtained after 45 minutes of operation in the VR group, but not in the control group and, after 90 minutes, the reduction was larger in the experimental group than in other one. In conclusion, this study presents an innovative promising technique to reduce anxiety during surgical interventions, even if more studies are necessary to investigate its effectiveness in other kinds of operations and in larger numbers of patients.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Studies in Health Technology and Informatics |
Pages | 195-200 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Volume | 142 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2009 |
Event | 17th Annual MMVR Conference - NextMed: Design for/the Well Being, MMVR17 2009 - Long Beach, CA, United States Duration: Jan 19 2009 → Jan 22 2009 |
Other
Other | 17th Annual MMVR Conference - NextMed: Design for/the Well Being, MMVR17 2009 |
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Country/Territory | United States |
City | Long Beach, CA |
Period | 1/19/09 → 1/22/09 |
Keywords
- Ambulatory surgery
- Cybertherapy
- Mobile phone
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Biomedical Engineering
- Health Informatics
- Health Information Management