Effect of Virtual Reality Immersion on Patient's Anxiety During Pre-oxygenation Before General Anaesthesia

Ente Ospedaliero Cantonale, Bellinzona

Status: Completed

Conditions: Pre-oxygenation; Anxiety; Virtual Reality

Treatments: Device: Virtual reality immersion

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06823141

ID 2024-02157

Details and patient eligibility

About

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if the use of virtual reality immersion during pre-oxygenation before general anesthesia could be feasible and beneficial for the patient. The main questions it aims to answer are:

Does virtual reality immersion during pre-oxygenation reduce patient's anxiety? Does it impact patient's and anaesthetist's comfort? Is this technique easy to implement?

Enrollment: 46 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• All non-ambulatory patients undergoing elective surgery or procedure under general anaesthesia with intravenous induction
• Minimal age of 18 year old
• Able to give informed consent for the study as documented by signature

Exclusion criteria

• Lacking capacity or ability to complete the consent form and/or questionnaire and interview method and/or incapacity to respond to the required obligations linked to the study protocol (assessed by the operator)
• Known cognitive dysfunction, previous history of neurological/psychiatric disease like epilepsy
• Depression or anxiety under treatment
• Non-Italian speaking patients
• Anticipated difficult airway management
• Injuries to the head/face that would prohibit wearing headsets
• Active nasal bleeding or occlusion, nasal abnormality or recent nasal trauma, recent nasal surgery, significant raised intracranial pressure and base of skull fractures
• Any pre-operative premedication, including pharmacological premedication
• Rapid sequence induction
• Haemodynamic instability
• Infectious skin conditions on the head/face
• Undrained pneumothorax
• Contact isolation due to bacteria and viruses
• Symptoms of vertigo or motion sickness
• Reduced visual or auditory acuity
• BMI > 35 kg/m2
• Pregnancy
• Claustrophobia
• Pre-existing hypoxemia (baseline oxygen saturation < 92% when breathing room air)
• Need for an arterial line before general anaesthesia induction

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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46 participants in 1 patient group

Virtual reality arm

Experimental group

Treatment:

Device: Virtual reality immersion