It’s been revealed that VR is more helpful than you can imagine in the healthcare industry. Check out the latest reports coming from the medical website Medical Xpress below.
VR benefits during surgery
The website notes that an anesthesiologist, Adeel Faruki, MD, MBA, works with patients to manage not just pain, but also anxiety. It’s important to note that this can be a particular concern for patients receiving a nerve block, rather than sedation or general anesthesia, for upper extremity procedures such as hand surgery.
“If a nerve block is done and blocks the nerves innervating the area a surgeon is working on, what we’re generally managing intraoperatively is anxiety and hemodynamic changes,” explains Faruki, an assistant professor of anesthesiology in the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
He continued and said this:
“Patients may feel fear, they may feel claustrophobia, so we started asking how we can reduce the amount of sedative medications given intraoperatively for patients who receive nerve block for upper extremity surgery. We thought, ‘Why don’t we offer them a distraction?'”
This led to recently published research studying virtual reality (VR) immersion compared to monitored anesthesia care for hand surgery.
“As VR has continually grown into the medical sphere, we realized that immersive experiences through VR have the potential to benefit patients as much as the intraoperative treatments we currently use,” Faruki says. “We decided to look at patient satisfaction in a pilot study comparing the two groups’ experiences.”
Virtual reality immersion during surgical procedures
Here’s what the specialist had to say about the issue:
“We’re realizing that a lot of the medications we’re giving patients, the intraoperative sedation, are safe but can carry side-effects—dropping blood pressure, slowed breathing,” Faruki says.
He continued and explained this: “If VR can have a similar effect of managing patient anxiety without with the side effects associated with sedation, that’s something we should be studying.”
Check out the original article in order to learn more available details.
