The Effectiveness of Virtual Reality Pain Control With Multiple Treatments of Longer Durations: A Case Study

Immersive virtual reality (VR) has proved to be potentially valuable as a pain control technique for patients with severe burns undergoing wound care and physical therapy. Recent studies have shown that single, 3-min visits to a virtual world can dramatically reduce the amount of pain experienced during wound care, and the illusion of going inside the computer-generated world helps make VR analgesia unusually effective. This case study explored whether VR continues to reduce pain when the duration and frequency of VR treatments are increased to more practical levels. A patient with deep flash burns covering 42% of his body spent varying amounts of time performing physical therapy with and without virtual reality. Five subjective pain ratings INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION, 13(1), 1–12 Copyright © 2001, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.