Study says wearing VR during surgery can reduce the amount of anesthetic

CTOnews.com, September 25 (Xinhua)-- researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston have published a study showing that patients who wear VR headsets need less anesthetic during hand surgery, MIT News reported.

Regular patients need an average of 750.6 milligrams of propofol per hour, while people who watch relaxing VR content such as meditation, natural scenes and videos need only 125.3 milligrams. In addition, patients with VR head display also recovered earlier, leaving the post-anesthesia ward at an average of 63 minutes, compared with 75 minutes for routine patients.

CTOnews.com learned that the researchers claimed that VR distracted patients from pain, but they also acknowledged that the wearer had expected VR to help when they entered the operating room, which could distort the results.

▼ An is the experimental scene of the operation, and B is the VR picture.

However, the team at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is planning to rule out this comforting effect. A follow-up trial will also assess the effects of VR on patients undergoing hip and knee surgery. Past experiments, such as those at St. Joseph's Hospital in France, have shown that the technique can indeed help ease the mood of patients.

Paper address: click here to view