The United States has just approved the use of a virtual reality system, called EaseVRx, to treat chronic back pain.
- The goal is to accompany patients and help them recognize and understand the thought patterns and emotions they have when the pain becomes too much to bear.
- The therapy is called EaseVRX and is based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy.
- It helps patients better manage pain for several months.
More and more medicine uses virtual reality. Recently, researchers have in turn shown that it would make it possible to recover memory for people with dementia, to help women relax during childbirth or even to detect Alzheimer’s early in sick patients. In the United States, a new application has just been authorized by the Food and Drug Administrationthe Medicines Agency, to combat chronic back pain.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy
The therapy is called EaseVRX and is based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy. The goal is to accompany patients and help them recognize and understand the thought patterns and emotions they have when the pain becomes too much to bear. For this, the treatment is based on relaxation and distraction to give patients a better perception of internal signals so that they can take a step back from their condition. Developed by the AppliedVR company, it uses both a virtual reality headset and an audio headset to amplify the volume of users’ breathing to help them with breathing exercises.
Before the authorization of the therapy, an eight-week scientific study on 179 participants was carried out. The latter suffered from low back pain for at least 6 months. The researchers divided them into two groups. The first used EaseVRx while the other participated in another virtual reality program that did not involve cognitive behavioral therapy.
Beneficial effects over more than three months
The results, published on December 23, 2020 in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, showed that two-thirds of participants who used EaseVRx saw their pain decrease by 30%. In the other group, less than one out of two volunteers (41%) saw their pain resolve in a similar way. Additionally, people who underwent cognitive behavioral therapy reported experiencing benefits for up to three months after doing it, while the other group did not report beneficial effects for such a long time. .
This new treatment offers an alternative to opioid drugs which lead to a significant number of addictions and deaths.
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