December 5, 2016.
According to a study conducted by a team of researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, virtual reality could ease the pain of amputee patients. Explanations.
Tricking the brain to alleviate pain
Almost 3 in 4 patients who have had an amputation suffer from phantom pain. We talk about phantom pain because the limb that causes pain is precisely the one that has been amputated. This is neuropathic pain that is difficult to fight. Gold according to a Swedish study, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, virtual reality could work wonders in this area.
These pains are triggered by the brain that has not performed the amputation and is waiting for information from a limb that is no longer there. It is in response to this lack of signal that chronic pain is initiated. Thanks to virtual reality, the researchers make the brain believe that the limb has not been amputated and that it is still there. A deception that would be effective.
Using the amputated limb in a game
For the purposes of their work, the researchers asked 14 patients with arm amputations to use their amputated limb to drive a car in a racing video game. The researchers repeated the experiment 12 times. At the end of these 12 sessions, thepain was reduced by 32% in patients.
But that’s not all, the frequency of these pains had fallen by 61% during sleep and by 43% during waking. These improvements persisted for 6 months. It is by “moving” their amputated limb that patients have been able to effectively combat pain. He could therefore ” be effective in training the phantom limb ”, Argued Max Ortiz-Catalan, electronics engineer specializing in prostheses, and main author of the study.
To go further: Amputee, she adopts a kitten with 3 legs
