APRIL 1, 2024
Remote Cognitive Behavioral Therapy With In-Home VR for Chronic Pain
Remote cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with an in-home virtual reality tool kit may effectively manage chronic pain, according to a study presented at the 2024 annual meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, held in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Researchers sought to determine whether remote weekly CBT in combination with daily VR use would reduce pain and anxiety (abstract 104). Patients with workers’ compensation injury were enrolled in a 14-week CBT VR program that consisted of weekly phone calls with a trained therapist and 50 VR modules. Individual sessions lasted anywhere from three to 20 minutes for a total of 20 hours per week.
“The major findings of the study [are] we found overall statistically significant reductions in all five domains of [patients’] PROMIS [Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System] scores, which includes pain intensity, pain, interference, as well as reductions in anxiety and depression,” study researcher Drew Donnell, MD, an interventional pain fellow at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., told Pain Medicine News. “Moving forward, we’d like to further examine the impact of the program specifically on fear avoidance and how this ties in with neural circuitry.”
—Landon Gray
