Cardboard Mobile Virtual Reality as an Approach for Pain Distraction in Clinical Settings: Comparison, Exploration and Evaluation with Oculus Rift

Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) has been shown to work as a non-pharmacological analgesic by distracting patients from their acute pain for short periods of time. However, few researchers have investigated the effectiveness of mobile "Cardboard VR" for chronic pain patients. In this research, the viability of the Cardboard VR was examined by comparing it to another Head-Mounted Display (HMD), the Oculus Rift (OR), a desktop HMD. A randomized crossover study was conducted in a pain clinic with 30 chronic pain patients. OR was found to be significantly more effective than both the Cardboard VR and the control condition. Nevertheless, the results of this study demonstrate that Mobile VR has potential to become an effective tool for managing chronic pain because it is comparatively more affordable than VR that is restricted to desktop computers, because it can be deployed in numerous contexts, and because of its ease of use.

[1]  Yuan Bo Peng,et al.  The biopsychosocial approach to chronic pain: scientific advances and future directions. , 2007, Psychological bulletin.

[2]  T. Furness,et al.  Virtual reality as an adjunctive pain control during burn wound care in adolescent patients , 2000, Pain.

[3]  Jeffrey I. Gold,et al.  The use of virtual reality for pain control: A review , 2009, Current pain and headache reports.

[4]  Diane Gromala,et al.  A Virtual Reality Game for Chronic Pain Management: A Randomized, Controlled Clinical Study , 2016, MMVR.

[5]  Bernie Garrett,et al.  A Rapid Evidence Assessment of Immersive Virtual Reality as an Adjunct Therapy in Acute Pain Management in Clinical Practice , 2014, The Clinical journal of pain.

[6]  Brenda K. Wiederhold,et al.  Virtual Reality for Pain Management in Cardiac Surgery , 2014, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[7]  Mehdi Karamnejad,et al.  The Virtual Meditative Walk: Virtual Reality Therapy for Chronic Pain Management , 2015, CHI.

[8]  H. Hoffman,et al.  Virtual Reality Pain Control During Burn Wound Debridement in the Hydrotank , 2008, The Clinical journal of pain.

[9]  D. Chialvo,et al.  Chronic Pain and the Emotional Brain: Specific Brain Activity Associated with Spontaneous Fluctuations of Intensity of Chronic Back Pain , 2006, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[10]  M. Bushnell,et al.  How neuroimaging studies have challenged us to rethink: is chronic pain a disease? , 2009, The journal of pain : official journal of the American Pain Society.

[11]  Tony O’Brien,et al.  The individual and societal burden of chronic pain in Europe: the case for strategic prioritisation and action to improve knowledge and availability of appropriate care , 2013, BMC Public Health.