| Summary: | Virtual reality (VR) offers patient with a drug free supplement, an alternative or
complementary therapy to traditional pain management. VR technology allowing
its use in a wide variety of settings in the medicine world. So, we would like to
evaluate the current existing evidence supporting VR in pain management. We
conducted a systematic review of interventional and observational studies that
examined VR applications in pain management between 2010 and 2019. We used
Scopus databases, PubMed, Web of Science, Ovid MEDLINE and EBSCOhost
to identify the studies using keywords “patient”, “virtual reality”, “medicine” and
“pain management”. Data was obtained by two investigators and agreement was
reached with the involvement of a third and fourth investigator. Narrative synthesis
for all research was done. A total of 451 citations were identified, among which
12 studies met the criteria for inclusion. Studies involve various countries with
participant age ranging from 6 to 75 years old. Studies were small, employed
different design, instrument and measure for outcome. Studies addressed
experimental, acute and chronic pain with four categories of condition which
are burn injury, orthopedic diseases and chronic headache. VR was effective
during the procedure in experimental and acute pain management. Majority of
studies involving VR in painful physical rehabilitation therapy found VR reduced
chronic pain and some provide evidence of lasting analgesia effect of VR after
therapy. The usage of VR in chronic pain in term of psychological and cognitive
behavioral therapy (CBT) showed improvement of positive mood, emotional and
motivation that could lead to improvement of quality of life. VR also useful to elicit
findings during painful cervical kinematics assessment in chronic neck pain. VR is
a promising technology to be applied in managing chronic and acute pain. Some
research showed that VR usage is able to provide lasting effect of analgesia even
after VR session. However, there is a need for long term, larger sample sizes and
well controlled studies to show clinical and cost-effectiveness for this technology
to be used in clinical settings.
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