Background: Hospitalized patients with advanced heart failure often experience acute and/or chronic pain. While virtual reality has been extensively studied across a wide range of clinical settings, no studies have yet evaluated potential impact on pain management on this patient population.
Aim: To investigate the impact of a virtual reality experience on self-reported pain, quality-of-life, general distress, and satisfaction compared to a two-dimensional guided imagery active control.
Design: Single-center prospective randomized controlled study. The primary outcome was the difference in pre- versus post-intervention self-reported pain scores on a numerical rating scale from 0 to 10. Secondary outcomes included changes in quality-of-life scores, general distress, and satisfaction with the intervention.
Setting/participants: Between October 2018 and March 2020, 88 participants hospitalized with advanced heart failure were recruited from an urban tertiary academic medical center.
Results: Participants experienced significant improvement in pain score after either 10 minutes of virtual reality (change from pre- to post -2.9 ± 2.6, p < 0.0001) or 10 minutes of guided imagery (change from pre- to post -1.3 ± 1.8, p = 0.0001); the virtual reality arm experienced a 1.5 unit comparatively greater reduction in pain score compared to guided imagery (p = 0.0011). Total quality-of-life and general distress scores did not significantly change for either arm. Seventy-eight participants (89%) responded that they would be willing to use the assigned intervention again.
Conclusion: Virtual reality may be an effective nonpharmacologic adjuvant pain management intervention in hospitalized patients with heart failure.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov database (NCT04572425).
Keywords: Palliative; distraction therapy; heart failure; pain; virtual reality.