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Effectiveness of Fully Immersive Virtual Reality as a Pain and Distress Treatment Method as Compared to Standard Analgesic Treatments in Children Undergoing Painful Medical Procedures: a Systematic Review. (Preprint)


 BACKGROUND
 Effective pain and distress management remains a challenge for the paediatric population during medical procedures. Virtual Reality (VR) provides pain control by immersing an individual in a multisensory, 3-dimensional, computer-generated environment, offering a non-pharmacological way of pain reduction during invasive medical procedures.
 
 
 OBJECTIVE
 To assess the effectiveness of VR distraction as a pain control method compared to standard pharmacological and non-pharmacological methods.
 
 
 METHODS
 A SR of the literature used PsycINFO, PubMed, Ovid MEDLINE(R) and SCOPUS databases. Studies were included in the SR if they used an RCT design, were published in peer-reviewed, English language journals. Participants aged 3 to 21 years old had to undergo painful medical procedures in hospital settings with standard care as pain management in the control groups and VR distraction in the experimental groups.
 
 
 RESULTS
 205 records were initially screened, ten papers underwent SR. Papers were assessed using the PEDro scale. VR demonstrated a statistically significant reduction in anxiety and pain in the experimental groups vs. control groups, with a large effect size -.90. Results showed a large heterogeneity between the studies and suggested that VR intervention was more effective in those clinical trials that utilised non-pharmacological pain relief methods as their standard method of care in control groups.
 
 
 CONCLUSIONS
 Overall, VR distraction was effective compared to standard non-pharmacological pain control methods and can be used during painful medical procedures to alleviate pain and anxiety in paediatric population.
