A brief virtual reality intervention for pre-operative anxiety in adults

Virtual reality (VR) is a promising non-pharmacologic tool for managing health care anxiety. We assessed the feasibility and acceptability of a pre-operative VR intervention by adult patients and medical staff and measured anxiety in adult patients pre- and post-VR intervention.

We recruited 30 patients scheduled to undergo oral surgery and 8 medical staff as participants. The patients completed a verbal demographic survey and rated their anxiety before the VR intervention and at 1 minute and 2 minutes post-intervention. We administered the Acceptability of Intervention Measure to the patients to measure their perceptions of the VR intervention and the Feasibility of Intervention Measure to the medical staff to assess their perception of VR implementation. We performed an analysis of variance to compare pre-operative anxiety over time and assess demographic differences.

The patients showed high and consistent acceptability of the pre-operative use of VR among patients, but acceptability varied among medical staff. The patients experienced a statistically significant reduction of pre-operative anxiety (P = .003).

A brief VR pre-intervention is highly accepted by and very beneficial for patients undergoing oral surgery, positively affecting anxiety reduction. The perception of VR by health care providers needs to be explored to increase acceptability.