Virtual reality reduces paediatric stress over x-rays

Takeaway

• For children facing chest radiography, a virtual reality (VR) education programme is linked to reductions in their anxiety and distress and increased parent satisfaction.

Why this matters

• When children have distress about radiology studies, the result can be prolonged encounters or even cancellation of the study.
• Methods to address this problem, such as sedatives, have their own drawbacks.

Key results

• Compared with children in the control group, those in the VR group had lower:
  • Anxiety and distress: mean difference, 3.0 (95% CI, 1.0-5.0; P=.004);
  • Need for parents: 8 cases with parents present (16.3%) vs 18 cases with parents present (36.0%); and
  • Procedure times: 55.1 vs 75.0 seconds.
• Parental satisfaction scores were higher in the VR group: 9.4 vs 8.6.
• Number of repeated studies needed, and technologist-rated difficulty scores were similar between the groups.

Study design

• Prospective, randomised trial in Korea, with 100 children ages 4-8 years having chest radiography, 50 who had the VR program and 50 who did not.
• Funding: Korea Creative Content Agency.

Limitations

• Chest radiography is a relatively benign radiology procedure compared with, say, MRI.
• VR in this case involved a male character in Korean, so generalisability not known.