Virtual reality may help relieve pain during burn treatment

One area I’ve always avoided working in is burn units or anywhere where there may be people who are severely burned. The pain involved in changing the dressings and the treatments can be terrible. The dressings must be changed, the treatments must be done, but having done treatments on patients that I know cause pain, I just know that I couldn’t do this on a regular basis. I truly admire those who can do it and do do it though.

When dressings are changed, the dead tissue needs to be removed; this is called debriding the wound. And, removing the dressing and cleaning the area can also be painful. Back in March, I posted about a finding that a virtual reality game helped patients with burns (Virtual-reality Video Game To Help Burn Patients) and now that’s been taken even further at the on-going American Academy of Pain Medicine meeting in Hawaii.

Physicians presented the cases of two soldiers who were burned badly while serving in Iraq. They were provided with virtual reality glasses to use during dressing changes. This successfully lowered their pain levels during the painful dressing changes. The cases used the same vide game mentioned in the earlier post, Snow World, which helps the patients feel or create an impression of being in a cold environment, cooling them off.

You can read more about the case studies in this article, AAPM: Virtual Reality System Eases Pain of Burn Care for Wounded Soldiers.

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Tags: pain blog, burn pain, pain from burns, burn patients, virtual reality for burn paitnes, burn care, wounded soliers

Source: Maani C, et al "Pain control during wound care for combat-related burn injuries using custom articulated arm mounted virtual reality goggles" AAPM 2009; Abstract 174.