Back in April, we brought you an article about how virtual reality (VR) therapies are being studied in order to help veterans who are suffering from PTSD. Now, it seems that that same kind of technology is being studied to assist with another medical concern: pain management.

Matthew Stoudt, the CEO of a startup called AppliedVR, is hoping that this type of therapy will soon make patients’ lives easier. His company is compiling a library of VR content that will assist those patients by alleviating physical pain & anxiety before, during, and after various medical procedures. The company is in the process of working with doctors & hospitals in order to study the effectiveness of the Samsung Gear VR headset on groups of patients.

Mr. Stoudt stated that, in addition to using some third-party content, AppliedVR has so far created 3 different VR pain management applications, and one to help mitigate & reduce anxiety. Hospitals, doctors’ offices, & various clinics are using headsets that run AppliedVR’s platform for procedures such as blood draws, giving epidurals, and post-surgical pain management.

Previously, the use of VR has been studied for its pain management potential, as it serves as a force of distraction for patients undergoing treatments such as burn wound care.  Part of the issue, however, is that the equipment necessary in order to bring VR to all of these types of places is quite expensive: thirty-five thousand dollars, according to Hunter Hoffman, who is the director of the Virtual Reality Research Center at the University of Washington’s Human Photonics Laboratory.  Mr. Hoffman is also the developer of a pain management game called SnowWorld.

It is, however, becoming a lot easier for medical professionals to consider the use of VR for their patients, as less expensive headsets (Samsung’s Gear VR, Oculus’s Rift, and HTC’s Vive) are now on the market. As a result of this, companies like AppliedVR see an opportunity. While the company sells the VR content & a VR Gear headset to their customers for far more than what you’d normally pay for a Gear VR plus the price of a compatible Samsung smartphone (they have not disclosed the exact price point), it’s still quite a bit less than VR devices have historically cost.

AppliedVR is also working with one of their investors, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, as well as Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, CA, to conduct studies on the effectiveness of the software. One of Cedars-Sinai’s recently completed (but not yet published) studies worked with a group of 60 patients with medical issues ranging from chest pain from pneumonia, to abdominal pain from pancreatitis. The patients used AppliedVR’s content throughout the study.

According to Cedars-Sinai’s director of health services research, Brennan Spiegel, researchers discovered that patients who spent 20 minutes with the VR software experienced a 24% average reduction in their pain levels, going from an average of 5.5 to 4 (on a zero to 10 pain scale). Mr. Spiegel stated that this is “a pretty dramatic reduction for an acute pain,” and that it is “not too different from what we see from giving narcotics.” He went on to say that the hospital would be conducting a controlled trial, in which certain patients would get access to VR headsets whenever they wanted, while others would not.

Spiegel is “cautiously optimistic” about the prospects of VR helping reduce patients’ pain levels. He believes that the tech could be beneficial not only for pain management, but also to help with relaxation. However, the therapy will not help everyone, and Mr. Spiegel mentioned that before the usefulness of the therapy becomes clear, much more data has to be gathered. Mr. Spiegel has also pointed out that it will be important to determine when VR therapies would be helpful, and when they won’t be the best thing for the patient(s).

Another application for the power of VR (according to Stanford Children’s Health chief of pediatric pain management, Elliot Krane), could be helping children undergoing physical therapy, and getting them to be still during procedures like X-rays, CT scans, & MRI scans. The challenge, he stated, is finding software developers who want to build applications to target specific medical issues. However, AppliedVR has said that they want to do just that so that they can grow their content catalog.

On a personal note: As someone who has lived with varying levels of chronic pain for my entire life, this type of thing is incredibly encouraging. I can’t take narcotic pain meds for very long, as I get horrible side effects. What say you, dear readers? Would you opt for VR therapy as opposed to pain medication, or would you be hesitant to make that leap? Let us know in the comments!