During rehabilitation, pain management is a major challenge for patients and healthcare professionals. Opioids, drugs that act on the areas of the brain responsible for pain control, are often prescribed in PRM care to help control pain. However, their excessive use can lead to undesirable side effects or addiction. Thus, virtual reality is emerging as an innovative solution to help reduce the use of opioids in adults suffering from chronic and acute pain.
During rehabilitation, pain management is a major challenge for patients and healthcare professionals. Opioids, drugs that act on the areas of the brain responsible for pain control, are often prescribed in PRM care to help control pain. However, their excessive use can lead to undesirable side effects or addiction. Thus, virtual reality is emerging as an innovative solution to help reduce the use of opioids in adults suffering from chronic and acute pain.
Contrary to a video game where we are looking for entertainment, serious games combine a playful dimension with a serious and concrete objective (here: motor and neurological rehabilitation). Present in many fields in order to facilitate learning, serious games are revolutionizing the health sector by being defined as real therapeutic tools with an educational purpose. Indeed, they give the impression of playing, while in reality they make the patients work. They are not perceived as a physical, repetitive and complex activity, and this is what will motivate patients to rehabilitate themselves in a gamified way.
For a few years now, virtual reality has imposed itself in the health field with the objective of facilitating training for health professionals, but also to innovate in terms of rehabilitation techniques for patients. Originally, VR was not intended for the medical field. While virtual reality began to emerge in the 1960s with a first concept of headset, it is in the 1990s that we begin to think about its use in medicine.
Today, the healthcare system is always on the lookout for new technologies to advance research. Virtual reality combines simulation, learning and immersion of the user, while offering a strong interactivity close to reality.
Mirror therapy promoted for more than 20 years
Invented in 1995 by Dr. V. Ramachandran, mirror therapy is a neuro-rehabilitation technique that allows the brain to be deceived visually with the help of a mirror at the level of an injured limb (amputated, paralyzed...).
In full expansion for several years now, virtual reality (VR) is a technology that simulates the presence of a user in a digital environment. The user is immersed in an immersive experience where he can interact with the different elements around him. Over time, the medical world has been able to use this technology for therapeutic purposes.
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