Virtual Reality Eased Anxiety in 80 Children Waiting for Surgery

A quality-improvement project at a US children's hospital found that virtual reality helped calm 80 children aged 6 to 15 who were waiting for elective surgery. The work, published in PLOS Digital Health and led by Virginia Commonwealth University researchers, used a custom experience on a Meta Quest headset, either an interactive children's room or a calming beach.

Median distress scores fell from 3.0 to 1.0 on a ten-point scale, while fear dropped from 1.0 to 0.0 on a four-point scale. Clinically meaningful improvement was seen in 57.5 percent of children for distress and 55 percent for fear, and heart rate fell by 5.8 beats per minute with systolic blood pressure down 4.1 mmHg.

The authors are cautious. With no control group and a retrospective analysis over nine months, regression to the mean could explain part of the change, so they are calling for a controlled trial. Even so, the results hint that immersive tools could become a simple, drug-free way to soothe young patients before operations.