Study says wearing VR headsets during surgery may reduce anesthetic use

MIT News reports that researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston have published a study showing that patients who wear VR headsets require less anesthetic during hand surgery.

Conventional patients required an average of 750.6 mg of the sedative propofol per hour, while those who watched relaxing VR content such as meditation, nature scenes and videos required only 125.3 mg. In addition, patients who wore VR headsets also recovered earlier, leaving the post-anesthesia ward after an average of 63 minutes, compared with 75 minutes for regular patients.

The researchers claim that VR distracted patients from pain, however they also acknowledge that headset wearers entered the operating room already expecting VR to help, which may have skewed the results of the experiment.

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