VR for burn victims

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geekmaster
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VR for burn victims

Post by geekmaster »

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201202/burning-man-sam-brown-jay-kirk-gq-february-2012 wrote:Using $35,000 goggles—the sort of hardware ordinarily used for training fighter pilots—researchers obtained drops in pain ratings by 30 to 50 percent. ... "VR not only reduces pain perception; it changes the way the brain processes pain signals." ... The game play was like a white noise that canceled out the pain—as great a relief as he'd gotten so far during therapy, better even than morphine. ... Echoing the civilian studies, soldiers reported significant drops in pain while immersed in SnowWorld. Time spent thinking about pain, which is an inextricable contributor to actual pain, dropped from 76 percent without SnowWorld to 22 percent with SnowWorld. Amazingly, some of the biggest drops were for the most severe levels of pain, which went against every previous expectation. Since then, SnowWorld has received a good deal of enthusiasm from several well-lit corners of the Pentagon. At least one four-star general, after seeing the results from the ISR study, has gone so far as to say that he foresees a day coming soon when VR pain distraction might become standard care. ... One part of the study is looking at using small doses of ketamine to enhance the sense of presence. ... Customized VR worlds will be pre-programmed right into the soldier's eye gear. ... imagine a near future in which combat patients could simultaneously distract themselves from their own pain while inflicting it on a virtual and remote enemy. A soldier could put his mind inside a drone instead of watching as a medic changed his bandages.
EDIT: That "inflicting pain from above while in pain" sounds like a recipe for disaster. A massacre of epic proportions waiting to happen? Instead of hypnotic implants, you could actually SHOW the enemy eating babies while you obliterate him and his neighbors...
:o
Last edited by geekmaster on Sat Jan 11, 2014 3:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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cybereality
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Re: VR for burn victims

Post by cybereality »

Sounds amazing.

I wonder if this would also work for if you were in a hospital or at the dentist.
geekmaster
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Re: VR for burn victims

Post by geekmaster »

cybereality wrote:Sounds amazing.

I wonder if this would also work for if you were in a hospital or at the dentist.
Yes, google finds lots of examples (dating back to the 90's).

Virtual reality in a children's hospital (1999):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10770078 wrote:We used virtual reality technology to improve the quality of life and amenity of in-patients in a children's hospital. Children in the hospital could enjoy a zoo, amusement park, and aquarium, in virtual. They played soccer, skiing and horse riding in virtual. They could communicate with persons who were out of the hospital and attend the school which they had gone to before entering hospital. They played music with children who had been admitted to other children's hospitals. By using this virtual technology, the quality of life of children who suffered from psychological and physiological stress in the hospital greatly improved ...
The effectiveness of virtual reality for dental pain control (2001):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11708732 wrote:... we contend that virtual reality is a uniquely attention-grabbing medium capable of maximizing the amount of attention drawn away from the "real world," allowing patients to tolerate painful dental procedures. These preliminary results suggest that immersive VR merits more attention as a potentially viable adjunctive nonpharmacologic analgesia for procedural dental/periodontal pain. Virtual reality may also have analgesic potential for other painful procedures or pain populations ...
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But what is old is becoming new again, thanks to the recent falling prices and technology improvements.
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Likay
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Re: VR for burn victims

Post by Likay »

I found that laying my head against the nurse chest had a very comforting effect on me at the dentist. I almost wished that the treatment could last longer. :P
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geekmaster
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Re: VR for burn victims

Post by geekmaster »

VR for pain management (and especially for burn victims):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwdl13q60Lk
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