Easing Pain with Virtual Reality

Aug. 17 -- While virtual reality can help gamers escape the simple cares of the everyday world, it can also serve a higher purpose: helping alleviate the pain of burn victims.

At the University of Washington in Seattle, doctors with the school's Harborview Burn Center are using a virtual reality system, which their colleagues in the Human Interface Technology Laboratory developed, to treat patients with severe burns.

According to Dr. David Patterson of the UW School of Medicine, the VR system works by taking a patient's attention away from the pain.

"Pain perception has a strong psychological component," Patterson said. "The same incoming pain signal can be interpreted as painful or not, depending on what the patient is thinking. Pain requires conscious attention."

Many of Harborview's patients have severe burns covering large portions of their bodies. Medicines like morphine are usually effective in dulling the pain when patients are resting, but during therapy sessions, when burned skin needs to be stretched and bandages changed, painkillers aren't enough.

Immersive Distractions

"I actually end up concentrating on what she's doing," said Mitchell Crazybull-Bertelsen of his sessions with therapist Dana Nakamura. Crazybull-Bertelsen was burned by a trash fire that raged out of control. "I end up watching her, and I know it's going to hurt if she moves the bandage a certain way."

Crazybull-Bertelsen isn't alone. Up to 86 percent of patients report severe to excruciating pain during therapy, Patterson said. Crazybull-Bertelsen said the virtual reality system has helped him shift his mental spotlight away from the pain.

Wearing a plastic helmet with a computer monitor inside, headphones, and a tracker that monitors the position of his fingers, Crazybull-Bertelsen enters a virtual world created with the help of multicolored 3D graphics, sound, and tactile feedback.

"We'll be done with the stretching and he'll say, 'Oh, when are we going to start?' And I'll say, 'We're already done'," Nakamura said of her patient's progress. "It's incredible how far into the virtual world they can get."