Division of Pediatric Anesthesiology, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford.
Department of Anesthesiology, Children's Hospital Colorado, University of Colorado, Aurora, Colorado.
Curr Opin Anaesthesiol. 2021 Jun 1;34(3):284-291. doi: 10.1097/ACO.0000000000000983.
Commercial availability of virtual reality headsets and software has exponentially grown over the last decade as it has become more sophisticated, less expensive, and portable. Although primarily used by the general public for entertainment, virtual reality has been adopted by periprocedural clinicians to improve patient experiences and treatments. The purpose of this review is to explore recently reported evidence for virtual reality effectiveness for pediatric periprocedural care and discuss considerations for clinical implementation.
In the preprocedure setting, practitioners use virtual reality to introduce children to periprocedural environments, distract attention from preprocedural vascular access, and increase cooperation with anesthesia induction. Intraprocedure, virtual reality decreases sedation requirements, and in some instances, eliminates anesthesia for minor procedures. Virtual reality also augments pain reduction therapies in the acute and extended rehabilitation periods, resulting in faster recovery and improved outcomes. Virtual reality seems to be well treated for pediatric use, given close clinical care and carefully curated content.
Given the multiple clinical applications of virtual reality to supplement pediatric periprocedural care, practitioners should consider developing clinical programs that reliably provide access to virtual reality. Future research should focus on identification of patient characteristics and types of software that yield optimal patient outcomes.
过去十年，虚拟现实耳机和软件的商业化发展迅速，其功能日益复杂、成本不断降低且更加便携。尽管虚拟现实最初主要被公众用于娱乐，但围手术期临床医生已经开始采用它来改善患者体验和治疗效果。本文旨在探讨最近报道的虚拟现实在儿科围手术期护理中应用效果的证据，并讨论其临床实施的注意事项。
在术前阶段，从业者使用虚拟现实向儿童介绍围手术期环境，分散其对术前血管通路的注意力，并增加其对麻醉诱导的配合。在手术过程中，虚拟现实可减少镇静剂的需求，在某些情况下，甚至可以省去小手术的麻醉。虚拟现实还可以增强急性和康复后期的疼痛缓解治疗效果，加快恢复速度并改善预后。鉴于虚拟现实在儿科应用中的良好疗效，只要提供密切的临床护理和精心策划的内容，就可以安全使用。
鉴于虚拟现实在补充儿科围手术期护理方面有多种临床应用，从业者应考虑制定临床方案，以可靠地提供虚拟现实设备。未来的研究应侧重于确定能产生最佳患者结果的患者特征和软件类型。
