Virtual Reality and cancer pain relief

Trial shows VR can help cancer pain

Results support adding this non-invasive, non-pharmacologic therapy to improve the health and quality of life of people with cancer.

Pain management is a really challenging area, and many people living with pain are treated with pharmaceutical products, including habit-forming opioids.

So I was intrigued to hear about a trial involving cancer patients, which found that virtual reality helped to reduce their pain.
 

Clinical trial published online in CANCER

A 10-minute virtual reality (VR) session significantly lessened pain in hospitalised patients with cancer in a recent clinical trial published by Wiley (external link will open in a new browser tab or window) online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. Even a day later, participants experienced sustained benefits.

Most people with cancer experience pain, and treatment usually involves medications including opioids. VR sessions that immerse the user in new environments have been shown to be a non-invasive and non-pharmacologic way to lessen pain in different patient populations, but data are lacking in individuals with cancer.

To investigate, Hunter Groninger, MD, of Georgetown University School of Medicine and MedStar Health and his colleagues randomized 128 adults with cancer with moderate or severe pain to a 10-minute immersive VR intervention involving calm, pleasant environments or to a 10-minute two-dimensional guided imagery experience on an iPad tablet.
 

What did they find out?

The investigators found that both interventions lessened pain, but VR sessions had a greater impact. Based on patient-reported scores from 0 to 10, patients in the guided imagery group reported an average decrease of 0.7 in pain scores, whereas those in the VR group reported an average drop of 1.4.

Twenty four hours after the assigned intervention, participants in the VR group reported sustained improvement in pain severity (1.7 points lower than baseline before the VR intervention) compared with participants in the guided imagery group (only 0.3 points lower than baseline before the active control intervention).

Participants assigned to the VR intervention also reported improvements related to pain “bothersomeness” (how much the pain bothered them, regardless of the severity of the pain) and general distress, and they expressed satisfaction with the intervention.

 

Dr Groninger said:

“Results from this trial suggest that immersive VR may be a useful non-medication strategy to improve the cancer pain experience. While this study was conducted among hospitalised patients, future studies should also evaluate VR pain therapies in outpatient settings and explore the impact of different VR content to improve different types of cancer-related pain in different patient populations. Perhaps one day, patients living with cancer pain will be prescribed a VR therapy to use at home to improve their pain experience, in addition to usual cancer pain management strategies like pain medications.”

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