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Virtual Reality Has Real Promise For Pain Relief
Recent studies show how it can help a wide variety of patients
Over the last 10 years, two of my very favorite people in the world have had to fight advanced cancer, and I’ve come to learn what pain looks like.
I’m not talking about average pain — slamming your hand in a door, cutting yourself badly, even breaking a bone. The pain I’m referring to is the sort that leaves you pale, gasping, weak, and nearly unable to function. This sort of pain continues without end for days, weeks, months. It is all-consuming.
It’s not just cancer patients who suffer. Burn victims, people with severe back injuries, and soldiers badly hurt in combat (among others) live with intense pain like this.
There are, of course, powerful drugs available to reduce pain, and I am truly grateful for them. They make it possible for people to live and work, and they at least partially alleviate suffering. My family and I have endured questioning and sidelong glances at the pharmacy when picking up opioids for my daughter, a cancer patient. We’ve had to place pleading calls to doctors to make sure she didn’t run out of meds when the pain ramped up unexpectedly. Having those pills on hand is sometimes the difference between her living a nearly normal life and being curled in a ball on the floor.
These medicines are not perfect, though. The addictive nature of some opioids has had terrible consequences.
We need to find better ways to control pain, and there are some smart people currently working on creative approaches. Experiments with virtual reality (VR) in anxiety and pain relief have been performed for over 18 years, and studies are beginning to show how effective VR could be for some types of pain.
How VR has helped in clinical use
A recent study by Dr. Brennan Spiegel and his team at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center showed that VR can work as a pain control measure in a hospital setting when combined with pain medications. The study was performed on patients hospitalized for a variety of conditions who participated voluntarily. When combined with VR, participants’ reported pain relief was significantly greater than what resulted from…
