NAR I Network Aging Research

Given the growing need for palliative care, the development of innovative interventions for effective control of symptoms, psychosocial and spiritual burden is becoming increasingly important. Demographic change and improved survival times even in incurable situations lead to an increase in palliative cancer patients requiring inpatient care although they may prefer being at home. How would patients feel if they could virtually escape from hospital to their individual comfort area? Virtual Reality (VR) gives patients the technical opportunity to move around in environments that resemble objects and events in the real world, to “immerse” themselves in the simulated environment and to create a feeling of “presence” in the virtual world [1]. The basic principle of VR interventions is to distract the patient’s senses from real stimuli and replace them with simulated stimuli. Cancer patients benefit from VR in burdensome situations [2], but evidence is scarce for palliative cancer patients [3, 4]. VR interventions potentially improve their well-being and reduce the perception of symptoms [5], but the impact of the shown VR content it is still unclear. Here, the possibility of personalized content is considered particularly promising [6,7,8,9]. In the clinical context of VR ‘personalization’ means at the patients’ choice from a selection of standard, mostly nature sceneries [6, 7]. In our study we take an even more rigorous approach to person-centered personalization and apply ‘individualized’ VR, i.e. content produced for the individual patient of his/her choice.

Gerlach, C., Haas, L., Greinacher, A. et al. My virtual escape from patient life: a feasibility study on the experiences and benefits of individualized virtual reality for inpatients in palliative cancer care. BMC Palliat Care 23, 247 (2024).

Link: https://bmcpalliatcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12904-024-01577-2