Opioids are the most frequently used pain medications by US burn centers to control severe procedural pain during wound care. Concerns for long-term opioid use have prompted the exploration of non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as virtual reality (VR), for procedural pain management. The primary objective of this pilot study was to evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of VR pain alleviation treatment on reducing adult burn patients’ perceived pain during burn dressing changes. Adult patients aged 18-70 years were recruited from the inpatient unit of a single American Burn Association–verified burn center between May 2019 and February 2020 and randomly assigned to one of three arms. Active VR participants played four VR games; passive VR participants were immersed in the same VR environment without the interaction elements; and a standard of care control group. 71 patients were screened for eligibility and 33 were deemed eligible to approach for informed consent, with 14 agreeing to participate in this study. Of these 14 patients, 4 were randomly assigned to the active VR, 4 to the passive VR, and 6 to the control group. Self-reported overall pain was lowest among participant in the active VR (dressing 1= 41.3, dressing 2= 61.0, and dressing 3= 72.7) and highest among participants in the passive VR (dressing 1= 58.3, dressing 2= 74.5, and dressing 3= 89.0) across all three dressing changes. Self-reported worst pain was lowest among the active VR at the first and last dressing (64.3 and 92.2, respectively), but the control group has the lowest self-reported worst pain at the second dressing (71.3). VR is a useful non-pharmacological tool for pain distraction but designing and implementing clinical research studies face many challenges in real-world medical settings. Lessons from this study have important implications for future VR studies by other researchers.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04545229

Funding/Support: This project is supported in part by funding from the Ohio Innovation Fund (Xiang – Principal Investigator (PI) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (R01HS29183-01, Xiang-PI). Role of the Funder/Sponsor: The funding source had no role in designing the study, collecting the data, managing the study, interpreting the data, preparing, reviewing, or approving the manuscript, or deciding to submit the manuscript for publication.

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The institutional review board of The Ohio State University reviewed and approved this study. Written informed consent was collected from each patient prior to participation in the study.

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