VR Headset Earns FDA Clearance For Chronic Pain Treatment

October 22, 2020 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Stepping into virtual reality may soon be a way for patients dealing with chronic back pain and fibromyalgia to find relief. Applied VR, a Los Angeles-based virtual reality company, recently announced that one of its headsets received Breakthrough Device Designation from the Food and Drug Administration for treating patients with certain pain conditions.

The EaseVRx is the first virtual reality device to earn this designation from the FDA for treating a chronic pain condition. This designation will make it easier for the development and review of virtual reality devices to help treat chronic pain conditions, and it could also make it more likely that VR therapy to treat chronic pain will soon be covered by insurance.

“AppliedVR is the most evidence-backed VR platform on the market, and today’s FDA designation demonstrates that health experts across the spectrum recognize the therapeutic potential of VR as a viable treatment for pain,” Matthew Stoudt, CEO and co-founder of AppliedVR, said in a statement. “Now, with the COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupting Americans’ ability to get in-person care safely, we’re looking forward to getting EaseVRx into the hands of people suffering from pain. Providers believe in it, patients want it, and payers are coming around to it.”

How It Works

Patients in the recent clinical trial were asked to wear the headset and watch at least one virtual reality program each day for a period of 21 days. The programs were designed to immerse the user into a virtual environment where they could take in beautiful scenery or even swim with dolphins. The goal behind the program is to help train the brain to focus on what’s going on around a person instead of focusing on chronic pain signals.

At the end of the three-week study, 84 percent of patients reported that they were satisfied with their VR therapy, and on average, pain intensity decreased 30 percent. Patients also reported an improvement in mood, sleep and stress levels, which all play a role in the expression and interpretation of chronic pain.

“Virtual reality is a promising skills-based behavioral medicine that has been shown to have high patient engagement and satisfaction,” said Beth Darnall, PhD, AppliedVR’s chief science advisor. “However, chronic pain patients to date have had very limited access to it, so we’re excited to continue working with the FDA to develop our platform and get it into the market faster.”

We’ve written about virtual reality treatments for chronic pain in the past, but we’re especially excited about this news because it seems like a big step in the right direction. Hopefully they continue to have success with this treatment and more people can find ways to treat or relieve symptoms of their chronic pain.

4 Benefits Of Virtual Reality For Chronic Pain

January 16, 2019 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Virtual reality has made waves in the gaming community in recent years, but it has another potential use in the chronic pain community. These virtual reality headsets can provide patients with detailed information about how their pain condition is affecting their body, which in turn helps patients understand why certain movements or actions lead to pain, and they can also teach relaxation and breathing techniques. As a pain specialist, I can’t tell you how important mental health and mindfulness is during a flareup.

But virtual reality can be beneficial for more reasons. In fact, we’ve highlighted four benefits the therapy technique can provide for patients dealing with a range of pain conditions.

Benefits of VR for Chronic Pain

Here’s a look at four ways virtual reality therapy may be helpful for your pain condition.

1. Better Pain Management – Research into virtual reality has shown that it can help to alleviate or distract the pain from a wide variety of pain conditions, including burns, wounds, surgeries and some chronic pain conditions. In fact, virtual reality headsets are becoming more popular in emergency departments to help distract patients from pain who are dealing with acute injuries. By helping to take our mind off of our pain condition, virtual reality can help to improve pain management.

2. Opioid Reduction – Virtual reality may not be able to put a stop to your pain condition for good, but it can help train your brain to relax, which is key during a flareup. By being able to better control your breathing and keeping yourself relaxed, we can take control over our pain. This in turn can lead to a reduction in pain medications, as instead of reaching for your prescription bottle during a flareup, you may be able to reach for your VR headset or implement the strategies you’ve learned from the device.

3. Decreased Patient Costs – Other studies have shown that the use of VR headsets in medical settings can help to reduce costs on the patient. Instead of being billed by a doctor or a therapist for their time spent educating the patient about their condition, these headsets can provide an immersive look into your condition without tacking on extra expenses. And as we noted above, if it reduces your need for medications, it will also save you money on your prescription.

4. Increased Activity – Finally, virtual reality can be a game changer for patients with chronic pain because it can help lead to exercise, movement and active treatment techniques. These devices can also teach patients breathing and meditation techniques, which can help them manage symptoms and in turn leads to more activity participation. As physical activity increases, so too do healing rates, as movement helps to lubricate joints and promote healthy blood flow throughout the body.

The Role of Virtual Reality in Chronic Pain Treatment

August 29, 2016 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Virtual reality is a new technology that is supposed to immerse the viewer into a different space. It uses high technology and complex visual stimuli to place the viewer into an environment projected in goggles in front of your eyes. As you move your head, eyes and body, the scene in your goggles transforms and you move in that environment. Through advanced computing, one is moved from your current environment into the what is being projected in front of you. Initially, it has been used for video games and virtual sight seeing. It can place you in a remote mountain village, skiing down a slope, or visiting a refugee camp among other themes that have been done.

The cost of the computer equipment, camera, software, and headsets are now becoming more affordable. More content is now available, and with lower costs, new areas of use are being found. Time magazine this week has an article on its use in the medical field, and for the use to help manage pain. One company, DeepStream VR, is experimenting with virtual reality to treat acute and chronic pain. The company is using the virtual reality experience to distract a person’s mind from pain.

Virtual Reality and Chronic Pain

Virtual reality simply uses distraction to relieve pain. Basically, the brain can only perceive a couple of inputs at a time. While watching and listening to the immersive environment of virtual reality, the brain is distracted from the pain and therefore one does not perceive it. However, the claims by this company that a VR experience can relieve pain for a prolonged time may be overly optimistic. Other studies with similar technology have shown most of the relief is very short lived. Furthermore, unless the video and playback is extremely high quality, many people tend to get motion sickness and nausea.

Visualization and cognitive strategies in the treatment of pain are not new. Most chronic pain patients benefit from the use of cognitive strategies to train the brain to be less responsive to pain signals. Psychological interventions have been used for years. These strategies have included everything from hypnosis, progressive relaxation, meditation, mindfulness, and multiple other techniques. Virtual reality is another way to of distract the brain from concentrating on painful sensations. When the brain is busy with other things, it just does not have the time to focus on painful stimuli.

In the future, as the technology and hardware improve and become affordable, virtual reality is likely to have a degree of potential for some people to at least temporarily distract a person from pain. The lucky group who can obtain longer relief from their symptoms by using distraction may benefit from virtual reality sessions. As with any of the cognitive strategies, the goal is to use the distraction of the brain from pain to prevent the need for reaching for another pill. Virtual reality is using a proven psychological technique in a new way that hopefully will help another group of pain patients.

What Virtual Reality Can Teach Us About Chronic Pain

February 23, 2015 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Virtual reality may be the next innovation in the gaming world, but it also may offer real world benefits for chronic pain sufferers.

According to research published in Psychological Science, virtual reality is being used to see how physical and physiological factors impact chronic pain. Researchers say that misrepresenting physical positions through virtual reality can change how someone experiences pain. For example, researchers would outfit patients with a virtual reality device that appeared to show their neck torqued in a position of discomfort to determine how a perceived position impacts brain signals.

“Our findings show that the brain does not need danger messages coming from the tissues of the body in order to generate pain in that body part — sensible and reliable cues that predict impending pain are enough to produce the experience of pain,” said researcher G. Moseley of the University of South Australia. “These results suggest a new approach to developing treatments for pain that are based on separating the non-danger messages from the danger messages associated with a movement.”

The Virtual Study

To see how virtual movements impacted chronic pain perception in your brain, researchers recruited 24 chronic pain sufferers whose pain stemmed from several different conditions, including poor posture, tension, repeated strain, trauma and scoliosis. Participants were equipped with a virtual reality head-mounted display and were positioned to prevent excessive torso movement.

Once the headsets were in place, researchers asked participants to rotate their head until they experienced pain. What the participants didn’t know is that their virtual reality devices either:

Provided an accurate representation of their neck rotation.

Projected an over-rotated representation of the person’s neck.

Projected an under-rotated representation of the person’s neck.

After looking at the data, researchers uncovered that the feedback display had a significant impact on when the participant reported pain. Researchers found:

When head rotation was understated, participants rotated their heads about 6 percent farther than normal before reporting pain.

When head rotation was overstated, pain-free range of motion was reduced by an average of 7 percent.

Intensity of pain did not differ across the various representations.

“We were surprised at how robust and predictable this pattern of results was,” said Moseley. “If cues signaling danger amplify or indeed trigger pain, then these cues present a novel target for therapy.”