Drugs/Therapy

Virtual Reality: Substitute for Sedatives?

By Joie M Gahum | Update Date: Feb 04, 2017 10:28 AM EST

A surgeon is Mexico, despite its current violent state is currently using virtual reality to relieve stress and pain that patients experience during medical operations. This process is mostly used when sedatives are not possible for use.

Jose Luis Mosso Vazquez, 54, and is currently a surgeon at the Panamerican University in Mexico City is looking into bringing virtual reality into the operating room, BBC reports. The Virtual Reality technique is being used as a high-tech distraction technique that will help in assisting doctors during surgery. Instead of using powerful painkillers and sedatives, surgeons will be utilizing local anesthetic instead and will introduce virtual reality to their patients to proceed with the operation.

Mosso's experiments are aiming to prove that reducing drug doses can help in minimizing the cost of hospitalization in Mexico. It will also prevent the risks pf possible complications that can come from painkillers and sedatives. Such methods can also help in improving the recovery rate of patients.

Similar reports from Science Daily reveals that through sophisticated virtual reality helmets and a determined disposition of the patient can reduce physical pan that is experienced during medical treatment. This type of distraction technique can help in reducing the dosage of sedatives during medical operations.

It has been more than decades since the technique of distraction has been exploited to be able to apply it in clinical practice. With the aim of reducing physical pain associated with medical procedures, using distraction as an option is being relied on the assumption that pain is a psychological perception.

Advance distraction techniques known as ADT's is currently using 3D images combined with superb audio stimuli to be able to achieve a technique that will be an effective distractor than the usual distraction methods subjugated in the past such as watching a film or playing a computer game.

If virtual reality presents such possible solutions in real-life situations, it can be used as a powerful analgesic and reduce the amount of sedatives and pain relievers used in medical treatments nowadays.

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