Immersive Virtual Reality Rehabilitation Applied to Acquired Brain Injury Patients: A Systematic Review

Abstract

This study was conducted to learn about the research trends of immersive virtual reality rehabilitation training as it applies to acquired brain-damaged patients. This systematic review was based on overseas investment papers, and will hopefully provide basic data and evidence data for future research on arbitration programs. For analysis, the research focused on overseas research published from 2009 to 2019. Foreign databases Pubmed, CINAHL, and OTseeker were used to search for papers. The main search terms employed used a suitable combination of words such as “Imperial virtual reality”, “Rehabilitation”, “Acquired brain injury”, “Stroke”, and “Traumatic brain injury”. A total of nine studies were selected as a result of the research analysis. Seven of those studies targeted stroke patients and utilized an Oculus Rift as it’s immersive virtual reality device. The arbitration period was mostly for four weeks, with an average intervention being 24 sessions. In most cases of mediation, the patients showed significant improvement in performance of both motor control and activities of daily living. Based on the research results showing the positive effects of rehabilitation training employing immersive virtual reality technology its application should be considered at rehabilitation sites in Korea. However, since there is still a lack of cases and studies that utilize immersive virtual reality at rehabilitation sites in Korea, future research will be require to be performed to discover it’s full usefulness.