Assessment of Efficacy of Virtual Reality Distraction in Reducing Pain Perception and Anxiety in Children Aged 6–10 Years: A Behavioral Interventional Study

Abstract

Aim:The aim of the present study was to assess the effectiveness of virtual reality distraction on pain perception and state anxiety levels undergoing restorative treatment in children. Materials and methods:This was an interventional study with 30 children of age 6-10 years came to the Department of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry. The intervention was distraction with virtual reality eyeglasses and the parameters considered includes pain perception analyzed subjectively by Wong Baker FACES pain rating scale and objectively by FLACC scale; anxiety was analyzed physiologically by measuring pulse rate and oxygen saturation levels using pulse oximeter. The parameters were recorded before the treatment, i.e., baseline, during and as well as after the restorative treatment procedure. The values noted were tabulated and subjected to appropriate statistical analysis with p value set at 0.05. Results:The study displayed a very high statistical significance in reduction of pain perception and anxiety levels in all the comparisons made at three time periods, i.e., baseline, during and after treatment procedure (p < 0.0001). Conclusion: Virtual reality distraction can be considered as a budding distraction tool in the arena of behavior management that helps adapt the child to dental environment and able to deliver qualitative dental care. Clinical significance: Managing an anxious child is one of the challenging tasks for a pediatric dentist in the day-to-day life. As the world progresses with newer interventions, virtual reality distraction is one among them that has the ability to reduce pain perception and anxiety in children with a positive approach.

Behaviour and Anxiety Management of Paediatric Dental Patients through Virtual Reality: A Randomised Clinical Trial

“…Excessive anxiety can lead to the paediatric patient becoming uncooperative towards their dental treatment, making the process difficult, or even impossible [ 2 , 3 ]. This lack of cooperation due to excessive anxiety leads to negative behaviour, which is the most frequent problem faced by paediatric dentists [ 4 ]. It should also be noted that individuals presenting high anxiety in the dental surgery face more time-consuming treatments and increased costs [ 5 , 6 ].…”

“…Dental anxiety is also considered to be the most predictive factor of how a child will behave during treatment [ 7 ]. Additionally, dental pain is perceived as a multidimensional process involving sensory, cognitive, and emotional components [ 4 ]. Several authors have found a strong correlation between dental anxiety and the child’s perception of pain [ 8 ].…”

“…Previously published papers [ 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 ] have exploited this theory for reducing the transduction of nociceptive stimuli during dental treatment using a VR headset. At present, the most common distraction techniques used include hypnosis [ 43 , 44 ], music [ 45 , 46 ], audio-visual media [ 47 ], and VR [ 4 , 9 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 ], almost all of which are based on distraction, relaxation, imitation, and systematic desensitisation.…”

Virtual reality for pediatric periprocedural care

“…In pediatric hospitals, innovative practitioners have demonstrated virtual reality's ability to reduce pain and anxiety in children during procedures, including phlebotomy, dressing changes, lumbar punctures, and dental procedures [21 ▪▪ ,22 ▪ ,23 ▪ ,24]. Pediatric anesthesiologists have used virtual reality to decrease anxiety and increase cooperation perioperatively and during anesthesia induction [25,26 ▪ ].…”

A Systematic Review of Physiological Measurements, Factors, Methods, and Applications in Virtual Reality

“…during intravenous cannulation of cancer patients (Wong et al, 2020), preparation for knee surgery (Robertson et al, 2017), stay on an intensive care unit (Ong et al, 2020), or a dental extraction procedure (Koticha et al, 2019). Physiological stress indicators are commonly used to compare the effects of the virtual distraction to control groups (Ding et al, 2019;Hoxhallari et al, 2019;Rao et al, 2019).…”