(512) The impact of virtual reality on chronic pain

Abstract

There is an urgent need for non-opioid alternatives in the treatment of chronic pain. To date, studies have convincingly shown that the powerful distraction effect of virtual reality (VR) makes it an effective tool for use with acute pain situations such as on burn units and for painful procedures. However, to date there have been no studies on the use of VR for chronic pain conditions. Almost all VR studies to date have used “Snow World” as the software program. This program was developed at the University of Washington. However, just this year a new company – DeepStream VR - has been formed by some of the engineers who developed “Snow World.” Their new product “Cool” is the one being tested at our clinic. With advent of Oculus Rift the hardware is now also available for use outside of the University of Washington setting. The studies at our clinic are, to our knowledge, the first in the country to study VR for use with chronic pain. This poster will review the data we will have from our two clinical trials on VR and “Cool.” One trial of 50 patients is studying the effect on a five minute VR session on pain scores for patients with chronic pain. We expect to see a decrease in pain scores pre-post the VR session. This is a simple proof of concept study to determine if VR, which has been shown to be effective with acute pain, is also effective in reducing chronic pain. The second study involves a randomized trial of 20 subjects with a neuropathic pain diagnosis. We will offer three 20-minute VR sessions and assess change in and duration of impact on pain scores. We will also assess the impact of the three VR sessions on depression, anxiety, self-efficacy and catastrophizing.