scholarly journals Pre-Exposure Cybersickness Assessment Within a Chronic Pain Population in Virtual Reality

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Brown ◽  
Wendy Powell

Virtual Reality (VR) is being increasingly explored as an adjunctive therapy for distraction from symptoms of chronic pain. However, using VR often causes cybersickness; a condition with symptoms similar to those of motion and simulator sickness. Cybersickness is commonly assessed using self-report questionnaires, such as the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ), and is traditionally conducted post-exposure. It’s usually safe to assume a zero baseline of cybersickness as participants are not anticipated to be exhibiting any sickness symptoms pre-exposure. However, amongst populations such as chronic pain patients, it’s not unusual to experience symptoms of their condition or medication which could have a confounding influence on cybersickness symptom reporting. Therefore, in population groups where illness and medication use is common, assuming baseline is not necessarily desirable. This study aimed to investigate cybersickness baseline recordings amongst a chronic pain population, and highlights how deviations from an assumed baseline may incorrectly infer adverse effects arising from VR exposure. A repeated measures study design was used, in which twelve participants were assessed pre and post VR exposure via SSQ. Significant differences were found between actual and assumed pre-exposure baseline scores. Furthermore, we found significant differences between actual and assumed increases in cybersickness scores from baseline to post exposure. This study highlights that clinical sub-populations cannot be assumed to have a zero baseline SSQ score, and this should be taken into consideration when evaluating the usability of VR systems or interventions for participants from different demographics.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted Jones

Chronic pain disorders are a common and expensive health problem worldwide. Available treatments for these disorders have been decreasing and new treatments are needed. Virtual reality (VR) has been used for acute and procedural pain for years but systems are only now becoming available for use with chronic pain. In this study patients with a chronic pain disorder were given the option of using either take-home virtual reality equipment for one month or take-home biofeedback equipment for one month. In the VR condition patients were oriented to the “PainCare” app but could access any free content from the internet as well. Qualitative data was gathered on 23 VR patients and 12 biofeedback patients. Pre-post measures of depression, catastrophizing and function were obtained from 17 VR patients and 8 biofeedback patients. Data found that there was a statistically significant decrease in depression and catastrophizing in the VR group but no such decrease was found in the biofeedback group. No significant increase in function was found in either group though the VR group trended in that direction. One hundred percent (100%) of the patients who tried VR reported that they thought it had helped them overall at least a little. Patient ratings of the VR equipment were more favorable than the biofeedback equipment. This non-randomized small sample study suggests that at-home VR use can be used successfully with patients to decrease the important treatment variables of depression and catastrophizing, and perhaps become a significant contribution to the treatment of chronic pain disorders.


1995 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa L. Deshields ◽  
Raymond C. Tait ◽  
Jeffrey D. Gfeller ◽  
John T. Chibnall

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiaheng Wang

<p>Chronic pain is ongoing pain lasting for long periods after the initial injury or disease has healed. Chronic pain is difficult to treat and can affect the daily lives of patients. Distraction therapy is a proven way of relieving pain for patients by taking their attention away from the pain. Virtual reality is a platform for distraction therapy by immersing the user visually, aurally, and even somewhat physically in a virtual world detached from reality. There is little research done regarding the effects virtual reality's physical interactions have on pain management. This project aims to evaluate different types of virtual reality interactions for chronic pain patients to determine which is most effective for pain relief. The results found that physical and mental activities in virtual reality are equally effective as each other at reducing pain while the patients are engaged in the content, while the effects of observing relaxing content persists outside of virtual reality. These results inform the design of future virtual reality games targeted at pain management.</p>


2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 440-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura L Adams ◽  
Robert J Gatchel ◽  
Richard C Robinson ◽  
Peter Polatin ◽  
Noor Gajraj ◽  
...  

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 346-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda K. Wiederhold ◽  
Kenneth Gao ◽  
Camelia Sulea ◽  
Mark D. Wiederhold

Pain Medicine ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 730-735 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn A. Marcus ◽  
Cheryl Bernstein ◽  
Kara L. Albrecht

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikael Svanberg ◽  
Ann-Christin Johansson ◽  
Katja Boersma

Abstract Background and aims Among chronic pain patients who are referred to participation in a multimodal rehabilitation program (MMRP), pain catastrophizing and dysfunctional pain coping is common. In many cases it may have driven the patient to a range of unsuccessful searches for biomedical explanations and pain relief. Often these efforts have left patients feeling disappointed, hopeless and misunderstood. The MMRP process can be preceded by a multimodal investigation (MMI) where an important effort is to validate the patient to create a good alliance and begin a process of change towards acceptance of the pain. However, whether the MMI has such therapeutic effect is unclear. Using a repeated single case experimental design, the purpose of this study was to investigate the therapeutic effect of MMI by studying changes in patients’ experience of validation, alliance, acceptance of pain, coping, catastrophizing, and depression before and during the MMI process. Methods Participants were six chronic pain patients with high levels of pain catastrophizing (>25 on the Pain Catastrophizing Scale) and risk for long term disability (>105 on the Örebro Musculoskeletal Pain Screening Questionnaire) who were subjected to MMI before planned MMRP. For each patient, weekly self-report measures of validation, alliance and acceptance of pain were obtained during a 5–10-weeks baseline, before the MMI started. Subsequently, these measures were also obtained during a 6–8 weeks MMI process in order to enable comparative analyses. Additionally, pain coping, depression and pain catastrophizing were measured using standardized questionnaires before and after the MMI. Results Irrespective of experiences of validation and alliance before MMI, all six patients felt validated and experienced a good alliance during MMI. Acceptance of pain improved only in one patient during MMI. None of the patients showed clinically relevant improvement in pain coping, depression or catastrophizing after the MMI. Conclusions The patients did not change their acceptance and pain coping strategies despite of good alliance and experience of validation during the MMI process. Even if the design of this study precludes generalization to chronic pain patients in general, the results suggest that MMI may not have a therapeutic effect.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiaheng Wang

<p>Chronic pain is ongoing pain lasting for long periods after the initial injury or disease has healed. Chronic pain is difficult to treat and can affect the daily lives of patients. Distraction therapy is a proven way of relieving pain for patients by taking their attention away from the pain. Virtual reality is a platform for distraction therapy by immersing the user visually, aurally, and even somewhat physically in a virtual world detached from reality. There is little research done regarding the effects virtual reality's physical interactions have on pain management. This project aims to evaluate different types of virtual reality interactions for chronic pain patients to determine which is most effective for pain relief. The results found that physical and mental activities in virtual reality are equally effective as each other at reducing pain while the patients are engaged in the content, while the effects of observing relaxing content persists outside of virtual reality. These results inform the design of future virtual reality games targeted at pain management.</p>


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