2023-06-23 17:27:01
Immersive virtual reality antidote to the tears of children in the emergency room. The experience of the Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome is positive: “‘Administering’ virtual reality to a child in the form of games or interactive stories, during a treatment or an invasive procedure, helps to reduce the sensation of pain and the anxiety reaction accompanying them”. The pediatricians of the Irccs pediatric emergency room in the capital are observing this: “By making young patients wear a virtual reality visor – explained by Gemini – it is possible to remove splinters from an imprudent little hand or to put in stitches without the child feeling pain or stress himself beyond measure (and with him the parents), screaming at the top of his lungs”.
“Children’s anxiety in the emergency room can be caused by many factors, including pain and fear about the procedure, and often manifests as crying, aggression, or refusal to make necessary diagnostic or therapeutic visits and procedures,” she describes. David Korn, first-level medical director of the Pediatric Emergency Room and head of Digital Health projects for women’s and children’s health at the Agostino Gemelli Irccs University Hospital Foundation. “These behaviors can be difficult to manage – he says – both for parents and for healthcare personnel. Medical and nursing personnel are used to dealing with such situations, but today, through the use of innovative techniques such as virtual reality, it is possible reduce for the time necessary, through play, the stress and anxiety of young patients”.
Distracting the child from what the doctor is doing, immersing him in the virtual reality of a game, his favorite cartoon or video game, helps contain the child’s anxiety and raise his pain threshold. “We have observed – reports Korn – that children during a procedure, for example removal of a foreign body, stitches, venous and arterial sampling, do not withdraw their hand due to pain. It is therefore not necessary to keep them blocked, because with the visor wearing them they are completely distracted and calm. Parents are calmed down in turn and contribute to not fueling a climate of anxiety. And the advantages also extend to doctors and nurses, because a calm environment greatly reduces their burnout”.
Details Antonio Chiaretti, director of the Gemelli Pediatric Emergency Department and professor of Pediatrics at the Catholic University, Rome campus: “We are using, in collaboration with Dr. Cyril Sahyoun (Urgences Pediatriques – Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève, Switzerland), virtual reality completely immersive, thanks to a visor donated by the non-profit organization Lollo 10 which actively operates within our polyclinic. In practice, when performing a painful procedure, we make the child wear a visor capable of creating an immersive and interactive experience , creating reassuring environments and situations that distract him from the environment that surrounds him.This experimentation allows us to perform a whole series of painful procedures (sutures of wounds, reduction of fractures, removal of foreign bodies or samples) and invasive (radiographic examinations and specialists) in children who access our emergency room, without resorting to the use of drugs or sedatives to calm them down”.
“This method offers many advantages, both in terms of parental and personal stress – Chiaretti points out – and in terms of saving time and resources, significantly reducing the time spent on and performing these procedures. The first results are truly surprising because when children start playing and interacting with the viewer, they are completely estranged from the outside world. This also allows them to remove the traumatic experience associated with staying in the emergency room and for healthcare workers to work without any kind of stress” .
Virtual reality – remember the note – consists of an artificial environment that is experienced by the child through sensory stimuli (such as images and sounds) provided by a computer and in which one’s own actions and movements determine, in part, what happens in the surrounding environment. It can be classified, based on the level of isolation from the real world, as non-immersive (computer or tablet-based), semi-immersive (when using a large 3D screen), or fully immersive (when using a desktop-mounted display). viewer that allows multiple interactions through multiple sensory channels). Thus virtual reality creates illusory environments in which the meaning of actions is defined by contingencies and neurosensorial stimuli. Active interaction of patients with the virtual world is necessary for full immersion; this causes the child to temporarily detach from the real world. No more tears.
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