When pain becomes bearable thanks to virtual reality

Text by: Dominique Desaunay Follow

A young French company has developed a virtual reality program to relieve the pain of certain patients. Thus, French firefighters from the Mayenne department suggest to the wounded that they are transporting to use immersive helmets while they are being taken care of.

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Virtual reality technologies have long offered us to escape from our real world in 360-degree universes exclusively created on computers. A real revolution for the followers of video games, who today find many outlets in the medical field. The effects that virtual reality causes on the brain are no longer to be proven, in particular in operating theaters, when immersive headsets replace general anesthesia, in order to counter their sometimes deleterious side effects, by advantageously replacing them with local analgesics .

More happiness, less pain

These operations are guaranteed without suffering, note the surgeons of many hospitals around the world who have tested the method. And since February, a pain relief system of the same kind called Bliss, that is to say "congratulated" is used by the firefighters of the Evron rescue center, in the east of the Mayenne department. " The program required 10 years of development and the expertise of specialists in cyberpsychology, " explains Mélanie Péron. His company "The Butterfly Effect" designed this virtual anesthesia application to treat the great suffering of the injured during their transport by ambulance to the hospital. “ We have been working on the development of Bliss for ten years with a scientific committee and three years that this program has been deployed in hospitals, especially in the emergency departments. The collaboration with the Mayenne firefighters is very recent. We have created imaginary worlds with specific sound atmospheres and specific music in very, very, soft universes for users to start letting go, we see it with their heart rate going down, they then find themselves in a modified state of conscience, they go to another world ”.

Better care for victims

The immersive helmet of the Mayenne firefighters offers patients the opportunity to view four virtual worlds with different atmospheres. They have the choice between a landscape of green meadows with unicorns, to visit the seabed alongside the fish, to take a stroll in space among the stars, or even to stroll at the foot of the trees in a welcoming forest . And it works! All these animations have been thought out to the smallest detail, visual, but also sound, to reinforce the immersion of the patient. " We have designed childish imaginary worlds, far from reality, so that no one can be polluted by memories that can turn out to be painful, " specifies Mélanie Péron in order to access, if not to fullness, can -being to a well-deserved sweet tranquility, when physical suffering becomes insurmountable.

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