Health Psychology Section, Psychology Department, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, Guy's Hospital, London Bridge, London, UK.
School of Orthodontics, Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, FL, USA.
Ann Behav Med. 2021 Oct 27;55(11):1062-1079. doi: 10.1093/abm/kaab016.
Innovations in virtual reality (VR) technologies have improved the adaptability of its use in therapeutic settings, and VR has shown to be a promising treatment for fear of medical procedures, with research increasing in this area in recent years.
This review aims to collate evidence for the impact of VR on fear of medical procedures.
CENTRAL (Cochrane), MEDLINE, EMBASE, and PsychINFO databases were searched up to October 2020. A mix of experimental and case-control studies were included for review, which evaluated the effectiveness of VR for fear, anxiety, and pain of medical procedures for people with needle phobia, dental phobia, claustrophobia of medical scans, and burn wound care anxiety. Risk of bias (RoB) was assessed by Cochrane and ROBINS-I tools.
Twenty-eight studies were selected. Some studies included mixed participant groups of young people adults. The interventions varied, with VR used for distraction, hypnosis, or exposure. These were shown to be effective for reducing fear of medical procedures. However, effectiveness for blood-injection-injury phobias and burn wound care patients was unclear.
Evidence on the effectiveness of VR suggests that it does decrease fear of medical procedures in some situations. However, the RoB assessment illustrated a poor quality of studies across those included in this review, limiting the ability to draw firm general conclusions from the study findings. There is a need for further research exploring the use of VR technologies in the management of anxiety in physical health care settings.
虚拟现实 (VR) 技术的创新提高了其在治疗环境中的适用性，并且 VR 已被证明是一种有前途的治疗方法，可用于治疗对医疗程序的恐惧，近年来该领域的研究不断增加。
本综述旨在整理 VR 对医疗程序恐惧影响的证据。
截至 2020 年 10 月，对 CENTRAL（Cochrane）、MEDLINE、EMBASE 和 PsychINFO 数据库进行了搜索。纳入了混合实验和病例对照研究，用于评估 VR 对针恐惧症、牙科恐惧症、医疗扫描幽闭恐惧症和烧伤伤口护理焦虑症患者的恐惧、焦虑和医疗程序疼痛的有效性。使用 Cochrane 和 ROBINS-I 工具评估偏倚风险 (RoB)。
选择了 28 项研究。一些研究包括了年轻人和成年人的混合参与者群体。干预措施各不相同，VR 用于分散注意力、催眠或暴露。这些措施已被证明可有效降低对医疗程序的恐惧。然而，对于血液注射损伤恐惧症和烧伤伤口护理患者的效果尚不清楚。
关于 VR 有效性的证据表明，它确实在某些情况下降低了对医疗程序的恐惧。然而，RoB 评估表明，纳入本综述的研究质量较差，限制了从研究结果中得出明确结论的能力。需要进一步研究探索 VR 技术在物理保健环境中焦虑管理中的应用。
