Preoperative Anxiety in Pediatric Reconstructive Burn Patients: The Role of Virtual Reality Hypnosis

Shriners Hospitals for Children

Status: Completed

Conditions: Anxiety

Treatments: Device: Placebo; Device: Virtual Reality Hypnosis

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT00569647

277444040

Details and patient eligibility

About

Children with burns often require repeated reconstructive surgeries. These children tend to develop high levels of anxiety before coming to the operating room. Preoperative sedation, while somewhat effective in relieving this anxiety, has a number of side effects. The researchers hypothesized that preoperative anxiety could be effectively reduced by the utilization of a device which induces a relaxing hypnotic state through emmersion in a virtual reality environment.

Full description

The virtual reality environment is created by a Virtual Reality Hypnosis (VRH) device. The patient wears a headset which contains video and audio display. A twenty minute program is viewed, which guides the patient into a relaxed state via soothing audio and video input.

Enrollment: 25 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 14 to 21 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Child presenting for reconstructive burn surgery

Exclusion criteria

• Visual or auditory difficulties

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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25 participants in 2 patient groups, including a placebo group

v

Experimental group

Description:

Use of VRH headset

Treatment:

Device: Virtual Reality Hypnosis

c

Placebo Comparator group

Treatment:

Device: Placebo