Novel Virtual Reality for Burn Wound Care Pain in Adolescents

January 11, 2022 updated by: University of Arkansas

Burn wounds cause intense, complex pain, and subsequent burn wound care causes further intense, episodic pain that is often unrelieved by opioid and non-opioid medications, resulting in under-treatment of pain. Further, opioid analgesics can have untoward side effects including respiratory depression, nausea, constipation, pruritus, drowsiness, lethargy, dependence, and induced hyperalgesia. As one of the most severe types of pain, burn wound care pain adds to the trauma pediatric patients already experience from the burn itself impacting quality of life with subsequent behavioral and maladaptive responses, such as agitation, anger, anxiety, hyperactivity, uncooperativeness, aggression, and dissociation. Lack of control over the procedure, pain memory, anxiety in anticipation of the repeated painful nature of the procedure, and transmission of clinician distress associated with inflicting procedural pain on the child contribute to the pain perceived.

Virtual reality (VR) shows great promise as an engaging, interactive, effective non-pharmacologic intervention for various painful healthcare procedures, including burn wound care, therapies, and chronic pain conditions, despite equivocal findings, perhaps due to methodological issues. Designs of many studies of VR during burn wound care have been case studies or carefully controlled within-subject designs; sample sizes have been small. Recommendations for ongoing research include conducting more rigorous studies including randomized controlled trials (RCTs), repeat design studies, testing VR throughout the healthcare procedure, comparing VR to other distraction interventions; and using larger sample sizes.

Primary Aim 1: Compare the effectiveness of age-appropriate, consumer available, high technology, interactive VR with standard care (SC) on adolescents' acute procedural pain intensity perception during burn wound care treatment in the ambulatory outpatient clinic setting.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

43

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

    • Arkansas
      • Little Rock, Arkansas, United States, 72205
        • University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

10 years to 21 years (ADULT, CHILD)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Undergoing burn wound care
  • First visit to the outpatient Arkansas Children's Hospital (ACH) Burn Clinic or first wound care procedure in the Burn Clinic without sedation
  • Ages 10 through 21 years (based on a developmental framework of early adolescence: 10-13 years, middle-adolescence: 14-17 years, and late adolescence: 18-21 years)
  • English speaking (Note: Not all data collection tools are available in languages other than English)

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Any wounds that may interfere with study procedures (Previously, we did not have to exclude facial, head, neck or hand burns but were able to adapt the VR equipment.)
  • History of motion sickness, seizure disorder, dizziness, or migraine headaches precipitated by visual auras
  • Incarcerated minors
  • Minors in foster care
  • Presence of a cognitive developmental disability determined on prescreening by presence of a Section 504 accommodation plan or Title VIII individualized educational plan (IEP) in school. If IEP or 504 plan is unrelated to a cognitive delay, then the adolescent will be included in the study.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: TREATMENT
  • Allocation: RANDOMIZED
  • Interventional Model: PARALLEL
  • Masking: SINGLE

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
NO_INTERVENTION: Standard Care
EXPERIMENTAL: Virtual Reality Distraction
Patient will utilize a virtual reality device during wound care.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Pain perception during burn wound care of first clinic visit
Time Frame: From study consent, data collection, and randomization at beginning of clinic visit until final data collection at discharge from clinic; approximately 2 hours.
Pain perception as described by utilizing the Adolescent Pediatric Pain Tool. Pain is based on a 0 (No pain) to 10 (maximum pain) sonometer scale as told by patient
From study consent, data collection, and randomization at beginning of clinic visit until final data collection at discharge from clinic; approximately 2 hours.

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Debra Jeffs, PhD, University of Arkansas

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (ACTUAL)

January 4, 2018

Primary Completion (ACTUAL)

December 2, 2021

Study Completion (ACTUAL)

December 2, 2021

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

May 12, 2017

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

May 15, 2017

First Posted (ACTUAL)

May 16, 2017

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (ACTUAL)

January 12, 2022

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 11, 2022

Last Verified

January 1, 2022

More Information

Terms related to this study

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 206406

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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