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Real Pain Dulled In Virtual Worlds
26199 writes "The BBC is reporting on a novel use of Virtual Reality: as a distraction for burn victims who suffer excruciating pain during daily dressing changes. What's most interesting is that it actually works. Another use of VR discussed is in the treatment of patients suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; memories can be relived until they are accepted."
iirc, dentists used to do something similar. patients would wear headphones while procedures were being done. i think they would play some sort of white noise.
j
This could present some fascinating implications for medicine... Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is often one of the more difficult psychological disorders to treat, and is pretty much tops in the category of "anxiety-related" disorders. It would be a wonderful thing if it actually is useful in treatment.
-Vendal Thornheart
Call me a skeptic, but it seems like there's still a lot of room for potential damage from this. PTSD patients reliving memories until they're accepted? Doesn't that seem a little like forced traumatic recollection? I mean...yes, I'm sure it would have some desensitizing factor, but is that really a good thing? I don't necessarily know that I'd be jumping to sign up...
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So what happens when they come to rely on these techniques - people develop addictions to VR, just like they develop addictions to painkillers?
Sounds scary to me. Picture a person who can't live in the outside world because they have developed a psychological disorder based on the fact that the outside world only gives them pain.
Or the Slashdot reader who wants to experience VR so badly that he lights himself on fire...
that last one is definitely more likely, isn't it?
... this part of the article rubs me the wrong way: :-/
In collaboration with Cornell University in New York, Hoffman has built a virtual reality programme that is a simulation of the events of 9/11 designed to desensitise the patient to the events of that day.
It just seems too "Clockwork Orange" to me...
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
This would be great for relieving all that "intense pain" that I experience during class/study time.
Karma: -2^0.5 . Mainly due to the imbibing of dihydrogen monoxide
Scientists today discovered that Virtual Realities can dull the excruciating pain of social rejection suffered by millions of geeks and nerds on a daily basis. It also helped them recover from the Post Traumatic Stress of Wedgies, Wet Willies and the dreaded Rear Admiral. Lead Scientist Nelson Muntz claims 9 out of 10 nerds enjoyed a Virtual Rear Admiral far more than the real version.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
if this means that in the distant future, I won't occupy the whole nursing staff for 15 minutes, while they try to give me a shot?
Yes, I still have this childish behavior, because I don't like needles, and I don't like going into shock, which is what happens every time; yet, I don't want to be a nuisance.
My arm is hurting right now, just thinking about this whole topic...
Just remember, as with all emergant technologies, there are ups and downs, depending at who's disposal the technology is used. This could be, and sounds like it is, helpful towards medical purposes, and as others have mentioned, sure it could have problems with making a person desensitized.
I say, give it time, take it slowly, and just hope for the best.
Speaking of downsides, I can't imagine what the government is thinking about doing with this sort of stuff :P
Codito, ergo sum.
Now, I wonder how interactive these VR sessions are. Could the burn patients injure themselves by getting too into it? How "real" are these memories for the PTS patients? Will they fell like observers, or participants?
Xbox reviews.. We think they're funny.
Why not just have them read slashdot at -1, that usually makes me forget about my painful, painful life....ow...existance
Here I was reading Tad Williams Otherland where one of the characters (Orlando Gardiner), is very ill and spends most of his time in a virtual world as an escape from reality.
Is this science following fiction ?
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
Finding a way to distract patients from pain is a far greater solution than medication. No side effects, no expensive or addictive substances to use (well, those who really like MMORPGs would disagree with my "addictive" statement, but...), and in general would be preferred over medication.
I mean, this daily dressing routine... it takes only a fraction of the day. Giving them morphine for it then ruins the majority of their day, as they spend it in a near-lifeless stupor. And without anything, those few minutes of the day would no doubt be torturous...
-Vendal Thornheart
..how is this any different from when you were a child, your mother distracting you from injuries with a lollie/toy? I know it used to work on me, and it sure works on my girls. It seems a bit of a reach to claim this is anything new.
I am fearing that the sue-happy United States will take this too far someday. "Yes. I am suing the following landmarks: Colorado River, Niagra Falls, Victoria Falls, and the Atlantic Ocean shore located 2 miles south of Atlantic City for knowing full well the use of white noise generated at these locations were addiciting but still distributing these addicting items to minors, the handicapped, and the elderly"
Ok troll.
I can tell you I just got out of the hospital after having a tension pnuemothorax (life threatening)and I can tell you that morphine is about as useless as a nun with two tits. Might as well just smoke some 7up (the *good* addicts will know what I mean).
Morphine is useless. It does nothing but make you want better drugs. The pain is still there. A good hit of some BC Bud would do much better. Plus, I can't walk straight after morphine.
"It's called morphine."
Wow - that's quite a medical breakthrough you have made. I'm sure the global medical community would like to hear more about this as it seems this idea never occured to them to use painkillers before.
Okay, enough with the sarcasm. If you had paid closer attention while reading the article you would recall this:
"Dr Hunter Hoffman, research fellow at the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, has tested his virtual worlds on victims of burns injuries who suffer excruciating pain during their daily dressing changes which conventional drug therapy fails to control."
That's gotta be a lot of pain.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
I had a HGNS while taking my JKL, so HYSA and he LPHN'ed me.
"Pain requires conscious attention. Humans have a limited amount of this and it's hard to do two things at once," he said.
I truly relish the day they give this VR "distraction therapy" to women giving birth...
Wife: OH MY GOD, THE PAIN!
Husband: Keep pushing, love! Keep pushing!
Wife: I AM! I'm trying, but he won't come out! Enough of this natural childbirth shit, I WANT AN EPIDURAL... oooh... hey, look over there...
Anxious Husband: What? What is it, honey?
Wife: it's a polar bear!
Dr Hoffman believes pain contains a significant psychological element which is why distracting thoughts by virtual reality lends itself so well to pain control.
"Pain requires conscious attention..."
I've bought into this idea ever since the day I was curious and watched a mosquito land on my shoulder, get into its stance and pierce my skin. I was really shocked at how much it hurt in that one instance.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Here
even the screencaps look the same as in the story I remember, and they appear to have the look of 10 year old renderings.
FisterBelvedere -- Putting a whole new meaning to "streaks on the china" since 1996.
Numbing the pain of not having a girlfriend. I've been doing this myself for years.
The memory playback is a nice (but scary) idea, but I don't think it could ever be implemented correctly. If the plan is to play memories until a patient accepts what happened, a new memory program/video/experience would have to be generated for every patient.
A shooting victim would need a different experience than a burning building survivor, who would need a different experience than the train wreck survivor that comes in the next day. Since the situations would have to be fairly specific for each individual case, this would be nearly impossible to implement.
Also, if each different video/experience is produced, why not play it on a television? Even a big screen, if you want. I know the goal of the VR is to immerse the subject in the virtual world, but I don't know that it would be that much more effective than good old fashioned photos, videos, and psychiatry.
While VR pain relief may work to some degree initially, once the novelty wears off, or on an off-day when you just can't get interested in its "game", you'll probably find yourself screaming with pain.
Should I ever find myself in such an unfortunate situation, may God have mercy on me and set me up with an MD who will prescribe adequate opioid pain relievers. Currently that is the only thing that works, period.
Too often these days MDs are paranoid about prescribing opioid pain killers, what with the DEA breathing down their necks. See The DEA's Disastrous War Against Pain-Treating Drugs for example. It is customary to encourage the patient to grin and bear it or to seek pain relief through alternative therapies like meditation etc.
I myself have had minor surgery were they'll give you plenty of local anesthetic during the actual procedure; then they send you home with instructions to take tylenol. When the anesthetic wears off, the pain kicks in. It is only by whining and complaining that they'll prescribe an opioid painkiller, and unless you go to the ER (and sometimes even if you do) you'll be in pain for hours more until all the paperwork and procedures are done to get the prescription filled.
Chronic pain patients are in a real bind these days. They cruelty towards them by denying them long-term opioid pain relief is unspeakable.
It just happened I wrote yesterday about the usages of VR to treat fears. A company named Virtually Better, based in Georgia, creates virtual environments mixing video images and computer-generated ones to help people deal with their fears and anxieties. In this article, the New York Times (free registration) writes this costs only 10 percent more than conventional therapy. The newspaper adds that therapists using this system claim a success rate exceeding 90 percent. Virtually Better "has created scenes of a glass elevator and a bridge to address fear of height, an airplane cabin for those who fear flying and a thunderstorm to diminish fear of bad weather." Other environments address the treatment of substance addiction or of post-traumatic stress. A (Virtual) Therapist's Dream contains selected excerpts. It also includes images on the virtual airplane environment.
If this treatment can truly help deal with survivor guilt, then it is a very useful therapy.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
We found nuclear weapons in Iraq.
We found nuclear weapons in Iraq.
We found nuclear weapons in Iraq.
Is not usually life-threatening (you'll certainly wish you were dead while you're going through it, but you don't usually die).
Much more dangerous are the withdrawl syndromes associated with Alcohol and Benzos (diazepam, lorazepam, alprazolam... aka Valium, Ativan, and Xanax, respectively). Those folks have a much harder go of it than heroin and painkiller addicts, at least physiologically speaking... they get autonomic hyperactivity, refractory seizures, hallucinations... there's a very significant mortality if not medically treated.
Stimulants tend not to have such a severe withdrawl syndrome, at least in a life-threatening sense. I'm referring to cocaine, methamphetamine... there's a crash when you come down, and they can deplete your body's stores of catecholamines and other neurotransmitters, leading to periods of agitation, depression, insomnia, etc, but that's typically after longer term use.
A psychological addiction to VR should be a very minor issue compared to any of the above.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Creating more VR worlds for those that aren't helped by the action games would be a logicla next step.
I found them at a garage sale at a house in Escondio, CA - being sold by a family that as far as I could tell, spoke no english at all. The titles and the covers looked interesting, and the subtitles detailing "Neuro-Linguistic Programming" seemed like they would fit right into my occult collection anyhow, so I purchased them.
As I said, the covers were interesting - all of the book's covers have a strange, near psychedelic flavor to them - fanciful images of dragons and wizards (though the last book, which has the latest publication date, drops this look in favor of a more refined outdoor scene of gloomy mountains in the backdrop, a green meadow with colorful flowers and a waterfall in the foreground, with a "transparent" profile of a person where everything is tinted "lighter" through it). I only got about halfway through what I thought was likely the first book (being of the earliest publication date), "Frogs into PRINCES". I believe this to be the only book I have ever read that screwed with my mind, in a very strange way.
As I was reading it, I was also trying to use some of the techniques, because they seemed like very powerful tools, for both internal and external use. As an example, one of these tools involved recognizing body language, and using that in opposition to what you were saying (simple example, nodding your head "yes" while discussing something in a negative tone, or disagreeing with someone) - this was a tool by which you could convey information to others to stimulate them to perform certain things in a certain manner. There were other techniques of a similar nature, some which you could use internally.
As I read, my SO (now my wife) was telling my that I was changing - that I acted differently since starting to read the book. She asked me to stop reading the book, which I did, because I could feel this change as well - and it bothered me. After I stopped reading the book, I felt that a curtain or something had lifted, like a slight fog or something.
Now, I realize that this is just a anecdotal story, and that it carries no weight from an objective standpoint - take it as you will. I have kept these books, though, and I intend one day to try reading them again, knowing my prior experience.
What you describe of NLP I never got to in the books - perhaps it was in a later chapter or in one of the other volumes which I didn't read? The technique, though, sounds like something from NLP. I still don't know what or why these books are - they seem like self-help books, but if they tend to affect others like they did me, I wonder just what NLP really is about - and what its ultimate use could be? Personally, I wasn't looking for a self-help or self-change book - but I was interested in the idea of "hacking my mind", so to speak (yeah, I know that sounds like a contradiction. I was only looking for changing myself in a controlled manner for the hell of it and to learn how to do it in a different manner, not because I felt I needed it - probably not a good reason, now that I look back on it)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon