(ANN/THE Star) – Heart surgery is a serious and invasive medical procedure, and that can be daunting for a patient.
A new study released in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings indicates that virtual reality (VR) may serve as an effective tool to reduce pre-operative anxiety in elderly patients experiencing their first open-heart surgery.
Although much of the current VR research has focused on younger patients, these findings indicate that immersive VR was both effective and well-received among older patients.
These reductions in anxiety are notably important due to the established connection between pre-operative anxiety and negative post-operative results, including increased pain, reduced activity and greater medication use.
“This research represents a step forward in improving the patient experience and potentially using this approach to optimise post-operative recovery,” says study senior author and Mayo Clinic cardiovascular (heart) disease researcher Dr Jordan Miller.
Study investigators and Mayo Clinic cardiac surgeons Dr Joseph Dearani and Dr John Stulak both emphasise the importance of emotional state before and after cardiac surgery.
Unlike conventional anti-anxiety medications, which may present issues like increased difficulty placing the tube that helps a patient breathe during surgery and a longer time to remove the tube after surgery, VR offers a non-pharmacological alternative.
The study also emphasises the potential of VR as an adaptable tool, with the tablet-based option offering a suitable alternative for patients prone to VR-induced motion sickness.
The research included 100 participants who were scheduled for open-heart surgery.
Each patient wore a monitor to log vital signs and underwent a standardised, clinically- validated anxiety test before and after the VR intervention on the day of surgery. The test required them to evaluate their present condition using 20 questions about emotions, spanning from calmness to distress. Participants rated each feeling on a scale of one to four, with one being “not at all” and four being “very much”.
Half of the participants were given a VR tablet and the other half to immersive VR goggles as they waited in the holding area before surgery.
The VR offered a 10-minute nature experience featuring guided breathing while they observed trees and a waterfront transitioning through the four seasons.
The tablet displayed a video showing the content experienced by patients in VR, while those using the immersive VR headset could look in every direction and recognize environmental details, assisting them in navigating through the scene.
Both interventions lowered participants’ pulse rates, but they did not influence respiration rates or oxygen levels.
Overall anxiety scores dropped by two points with the tablet treatment and by 2.9 points with the VR goggles.
Moreover, the researchers observe that the results significantly enhanced in as many as seven of the anxiety-related questions when using the tablet and VR goggles.
Many of those replies indicate a more favourable shift from their earlier negative emotions – a result that has the researchers feeling hopeful about VR’s potential to reduce surgical stress for patients.
