VR During Surgery Could Help With Anxiety, Study Suggests

March 22, 2023

Vr headset on beige brown background. — Image by Vladimir Sukhachev via Shutterstock

Instead of being anxious and under anesthesia during a surgery, you can now emerge yourself in VR.

Surgery can be a terrifying process for anyone. Even the thought of having to undergo one can bring much anxiety in people. New research by Michigan State University suggests using VR, or virtual reality, during wide-awake surgery could diminish patient anxiety and bring peace.

The study, published in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, says patients who were submerged in VR content during their surgery encountered more pleasure than those who didn't.

"For patients immersed in the VR experience, we definitely saw an increase in joy," says the study's senior author and an assistant professor of surgery at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, James Clarkson. "And for patients with an anxiety disorder, we saw decreased anxiety and their joy levels significantly increased."

The team compared those with carpal tunnel release surgery with monitored anesthesia or general anesthetic to patients that underwent surgery wide awake with just local anesthesia with no tourniquet in an office environment with an option to utilize VR submerging experience. They observed 404 patients who underwent surgery in three different hospitals in Michigan between August 2017 and March 2021.

The team found that patients that had the surgery traditionally in a surgical room were twice as likely to experience a neutral or even a negative experience compared to those who had the surgery wide awake while being submerged in VR, with 23% versus 11%. Those who had the traditional surgery also had notably reduced joy, at 44% versus 20%, and heightened anxiety at 42% versus 26%.

For patients who had the surgery wide awake in an office setting, the ones that opted for VR usage had an elevated joy compared to those who didn't use the VR option (85% versus 73%). Patients with anxiety disorder opted for the VR experience and saw diminished anxiety and heightened joy.

Clarkson first got the idea of utilizing VR in the operating room in 2016 when he saw his children playing with it at home. "I had an immediate sense of 'this is exactly what my patients need,'" shares Clarkson with MSU. "I could tell them, 'I won’t put you out, but I can put you somewhere else.'"

After the idea of utilizing the VR system, he went into action and eventually started Wide Awake VR, a 'better and safer way for people to experience medical procedures without the need for sedatives.'

"VR transformed the experience of the patient," continues Clarkson. "They no longer had to starve from midnight, and they could drive the same day — have surgery and go home just like you do with the dentist."

Clarkson will present the study findings at the International Virtual Reality Health Care Association, and will also hold a presentation titled 'Digital Sedation: A New Alternative to Anesthesia' on March 10 at the SXSW Conference & Festivals.

Comments

Papagayo

4 days ago

I think that having the option for patients to use VR during wide-awake surgery is a great idea. As mentioned in the article, it allows patients to have an increase in joy and decrease in anxiety because they have something else to focus on. When comparing this to traditional surgeries where the patients can be much more anxious, it is significant, as you had mentioned in your article. As a student, I feel that pairing virtual reality with surgery is an important step forward in terms of technological advancement. We have had virtual reality for a while now in the form of video games where participants are able to immerse themselves into a new reality and move within that reality with their movements recorded and displayed onto the screen. By allowing patients to participant in a similar manner, I feel that we would be benefiting their experience greatly, and this is especially important, because the goal of a physician should be to help their patients to the best extent possible. With the bioethical principles taught in medicine, I feel that combining VR and surgery fulfills the principles of beneficence, as well as autonomy. Autonomy is fulfilled because patients now have that option to choose between having a normal surgery, or having one augmented with virtual reality, and since all patients are different, some may have more preferences than others. Next, beneficence is also used because again, allowing the use of this virtual reality technology to complement surgeries has been shown to statistically improve the moods of the patients. This is based on the data that you shared in your article, on how for example, traditional surgery shows a notable reduction in joy and increase in anxiety, whereas those that are submerged in VR were less likely to encounter a negative experience during their operation. Thanks for your article, and I help that as technology continues to advance, that we will be able to make surgery and VR submersions a more universal option for patients in all types of settings. And not just in surgical type settings, I feel that it would be helpful in general for any kind of stressful situation for patients, for example: getting one’s blood drawn or donating blood so that the patient can be less stressed and also to allow them to focus on something else so that they feel like the time passes by more efficiently.