Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Saga University, Nabeshima 5-1-1, Saga, 849-8501, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2023 Nov 22;13(1):20487. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-47764-8.
Many patients are frightened of or anxious about dental treatment. We have recently reported our use of virtual reality (VR) to alleviate the fear and anxiety experienced during oral surgical procedures However, the effectiveness of VR in alleviating anxiety varies greatly between individuals. We therefore investigated whether the content of the VR presentation made any difference to its effect in alleviating anxiety, and whether it had any analgesic effect. The study subjects experienced one of two different types of VR presentation and were asked to complete a questionnaire about any changes in their anxiety during the procedure, including a visual analog scale (VAS) score. As an objective evaluation, changes in pain threshold during the VR presentation were investigated using PainVision. For those patients who experienced a presentation showing a natural landscape, the change in VAS score was - 13.3 ± 28.7 mm, whereas for those who experienced a presentation showing a video game the change was - 22.2 ± 32.1 mm, an even greater reduction. In a pain questionnaire completed by individuals who had experienced the video game presentations, approximately 70% reported that their pain had diminished. An objective evaluation of pain threshold also showed that the pain threshold of individuals increased by around 3% while experiencing the natural landscape VR presentation, but that while experiencing the video game presentation, it increased significantly by around 15% compared with baseline. These results show that the content of the presentation affected not only the rate of decrease in anxiety, but also the pain threshold.
许多患者对牙科治疗感到恐惧或焦虑。我们最近报告了使用虚拟现实（VR）来减轻口腔手术过程中经历的恐惧和焦虑的情况。然而，VR 在减轻焦虑方面的效果因人而异。因此，我们研究了 VR 演示的内容是否对其缓解焦虑的效果有影响，以及它是否有镇痛作用。研究对象体验了两种不同类型的 VR 演示之一，并被要求完成一份关于手术过程中焦虑变化的问卷，包括视觉模拟量表（VAS）评分。作为客观评估，使用 PainVision 研究了 VR 演示过程中疼痛阈值的变化。对于那些观看自然景观演示的患者，VAS 评分的变化为-13.3±28.7 毫米，而对于那些观看视频游戏演示的患者，变化为-22.2±32.1 毫米，降幅更大。在接受视频游戏演示的患者完成的疼痛问卷中，约 70%的患者报告疼痛减轻。对疼痛阈值的客观评估还表明，在观看自然景观 VR 演示时，个体的疼痛阈值增加了约 3%，而在观看视频游戏演示时，疼痛阈值与基线相比显著增加了约 15%。这些结果表明，演示内容不仅影响焦虑程度的降低速度，还影响疼痛阈值。
