Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 8, 2026
Human Fear Conditioning Conducted in Full Immersion 3-Dimensional Virtual Reality
Published on: August 9, 2010
The influence of different immersive virtual reality devices on children's pain during needle-based procedures: A
Changwen Shi1, Shina Qiao1, Xiuzhu Cao1
1Nursing Department, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China.
Background:
To evaluate the effectiveness of virtual reality (VR) devices with different immersion levels on procedure-related pain in children through network meta-analysis.
Methods:
We systematically searched multiple databases for randomized controlled trials comparing VR interventions versus standard care for managing needle-based procedural pain in children. Traditional pairwise and network meta-analyses were performed.
Results:
Nineteen studies (2042 participants) were included. VR devices effectively reduced procedural pain. Network meta-analysis (11 studies, 1362 participants) revealed: non-immersive VR performed best for Wong-Baker FACES scores, fully immersive VR for Face, Legs, Activity, Cry, Consolability (FLACC) scores, and semi-immersive VR ranked second for Children's Face Scale outcomes. Overall, semi-immersive VR demonstrated superior effectiveness across all pain measures.
Conclusions:
Semi-immersive VR showed the best overall therapeutic effect. We recommend semi-immersive VR as the preferred intervention for managing procedure-related pain in pediatric clinical practice.
Practice Implications:
These findings provide evidence-based guidance for clinical technology selection. Semi-immersive VR offers a practical, cost-effective, non-pharmacological intervention for outpatient and inpatient settings. Implementation should incorporate standardized operator training, 5-7 min immersion duration, and scenario activation 30 s pre-procedure.
