Researchers at the University of Washington tried an unusual addition to standard pain medication for two teenage burn patients: an immersive virtual reality world, entered through a headset while wound care was underway.
Each patient rated their pain during a session using a video game as a distraction, then during a separate session wearing the VR headset instead. In the first session, one patient's pain ratings dropped by 80 points on a 100-point scale in the virtual world, and the time he spent thinking about pain fell by 93 points. The second patient's pain intensity fell by 47 points.
The idea was that immersive VR captures so much visual and spatial attention that less processing capacity remains available for pain signals, on top of whatever opioid medication the patient was already receiving. The study involved only two adolescent patients, so it could not prove the effect generalizes, but it opened a research line that has since been tested in much larger burn-care trials.
Read the original study
Hoffman et al., Pain, 2000 · doi.org/10.1016/s0304-3959(99)00275-4
A virtual world pulled attention away from real pain.
Source
- Hoffman, H. G., Doctor, J. N., Patterson, D. R., Carrougher, G. J., & Furness, T. A. (2000). Virtual reality as an adjunctive pain control during burn wound care in adolescent patients. Pain, 85(1-2), 305–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0304-3959(99)00275-4