NCT03334929

Virtual Reality Distraction for Anxiety Reduction During Trigger Points Procedures in Pain Medicine Clinic

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 47 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of California, Davis · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

This study aims to evaluate the effect of Virtual Reality (VR) as a distraction method to help those patients undergoing trigger points therapy to reduce anxiety and increase patient satisfaction. Half of the participants will wear VR gear, meanwhile the other half will be in control group, which will not wear VR headset, only the normal care.

Detailed description

trigger points can cause a wide range of pain symptoms; pain in the anterior shoulder and down the arm, headache pain, back pain, hip pain, knee pain, frozen shoulder pain, and other symptoms. Local anesthetic injections and lidocaine injections are common "wet" needling treatments for trigger points injections. The proposed mechanism by which trigger points injections alleviate pain is based on mechanical disruption of the taut bands of muscle with palpation based needling. During injections, patients may feel an intensified pain and a twitch response. Distraction has been proved to be an effective tool in pain management, and it can also be used for a variety of medical procedures. By engaging in assigned tasks, pain and anxiety are assumed to be lessened throughout the procedure, while leaving patients less occupied by pain stimuli. . An immersive virtual environment may be preferable to medications such as sedatives, due to side effects and prolonged discharge from procedure suite. Occasionally, medications may not even be available in a busy interventional pain suite. At the UCD pain clinic, we do not offer sedating medications for bedside procedures like trigger point injections. By wearing VR headset, patients may feel less tense, anxious, and painful during trigger point injections.

Conditions

• Pain Management

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DEVICE	Virtual Reality headset	The participants in this group would wear Virtual Reality headset called Oculus Gear VR during their trigger point injections.

Timeline

• Start date: 2017-09-08
• Primary completion: 2018-08-31
• Completion: 2018-09-24
• First posted: 2017-11-07
• Last updated: 2018-10-24

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States