Virtual reality technology (VRT) is now known to effectively treat acute pain situations. VRT redirects a person’s focal attention into the virtual environment and interaction. This technique has been used to relieve injuries and laboratory-induced pain (Furman et al, 2009; Hoffman et al., 2000, 2009, 2011; Keefe et al., 2012). Past studies have subjects look at a virtual body or at their own hand while altering color and transparency. This modifies pain perception in healthy subjects.
Chronic pain persists and/or returns for longer than normal tissue healing time—three months or more—and causes emotional suffering while disrupting daily life (Treede et al., 2015). A prominent type of chronic pain is complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) which usually affects a limb after trauma or after surgery (Veldman et al., 1993). To test whether VRT can affect chronic pain, a group of researchers in Barcelona, Spain enlisted 19 patients between 40 and 55 years old with neuropathic chronic pain—CRPS and peripheral nerve injury–in an upper extremity. Subjects were administered single sessions of VRT lasting less than an hour. They then verbally interviewed about how their arm felt. The test subjects reported less pain although there were differences among different types of pain conditions (Matamal-Gomez et al., 2019).
Closing Thoughts
There are few studies along these lines at present and several of them yield contradictory results, but overall, the positive evidence is building. Applying VRT increases a person’s sense of their own embodiment and this perception somehow diminishes acute and chronic pain. Given the results, this pathway will continue to be explored and one assumes that VRT will be varied somehow to accommodate for differences in pain conditions.
Paul Shane, Ph.D., LMT
Director, Academic Content
References
Furman E, Jasinewicius, R., Bissada, T., Victoroff, K., Skillicorn, R., & Buchner, M. (2009). Virtual reality distraction for pain control during periodontal scaling and root planing procedures. Journal of American Dental Association 140, p. 1508-1516.
Hoffman, H., Doctor, J., Patterson, D., & Carrougher, G. (2000). Virtual reality as an adjunctive pain control during burn wound care in adolescent patients. Pain 85, p. 305-309.
Hoffman, H., Chambers, G., Meyer, W., Arceneaux, L., Russell, W., Seibel, E., Richards, T., Sharar, S., & Patterson, D. (2011). Virtual reality as an adjunctive non-pharmacologic analgesic for acute burn pain during medical procedures. Annals of Behavioral Medicine 41, p. 183-191.
Hoffman, H., Patterson, D., Soltani, M., Teeley, A., Miller, W., & Sharar, S. (2009). Virtual reality pain control during physical therapy range of motion exercises for a patient with multiple blunt force trauma injuries. Cyberpsychology & Behav 12, p. 47-49.
Keefe, F., Huling, D., Coggins, M., Keefe, D., Zachary Rosenthal, M., Herr, N., & Hoffman, H. (2012). Virtual reality for persistent pain: A new direction for behavioral pain management. Pain 153 p. 2163-2166.
Matamal-Gomez, M., Diaz Gonzalez, A., Slater, M., & Sanchez-Vives, M. (2019). Decreasing pain ratings in chronic arm pain through changing a virtual body: Different strategies for different pain types. The Journal of Pain 20(6), p. 685-697.
Treede, R., Rief, W., Barke, A., Aziz, Q., Bennett, M., Benoliel, R., Cohen, M., Evers, S., Finnerup, N., First, M., Giamberardino, M., Kaasa, S., Kosek, E., Lavand’homme, P., Nicholas, M., Perrot, S., Scholz, J., Schug, S., Smith, B., Svensson, P., Vlaeyen, J., & Wang, S. (2015). A classification of chronic pain for ICD-11. Pain 156, p. 1003-1007.
Veldman, P., Reynen, H., Arntz, I., Goris, R. (1993). Signs and symptoms of reflex sympathetic dystrophy: Prospective study of 829 patients. Lancet 342, p. 1012-1016.