A Randomised Pilot Study to Evaluate the Use of Virtual Reality Mindfulness and Wellbeing Sessions During Pre- and Post-Surgical Admission to Reduce Anxiety and Stress Undergoing First-Time Elective Cardiac Surgery
Non-drug methods like hypnosis and Virtual Reality (VR) are used alongside other treatments to help patients with anxiety and different types of pain. But when it comes to using VR to help people who are having heart surgery, there haven’t been many studies. One reason for this might be that using VR for this purpose is relatively new, VR technology is changing quickly, and it can be expensive to get started with VR.
This pilot study will assess immersive head mounted VR simulations in adult patients undergoing first time elective cardiac surgery to understand the impact on patient anxiety and stress. The primary objective is to assess anxiety and stress levels between two groups.
Cardiac surgery patients (n = 30) undergoing first time elective/urgent-in-patient cardiac surgery at Wythenshawe Hospital site will be randomly assigned equally to two arms (control with control or VR) using a computer-generated randomisation list. The control group will receive standard care admission process which includes a surgical information booklet, online Microsoft Teams experiential talk about the surgery pathway by a heart charity and two sessions of 15 minutes music session with WorWoder Wireless blue tooth headset as a control pre- and post-surgery as same timings as intervention group.
The VR intervention group will receive the same as the control group with the addition of two VR sessions: session one 15 minutes VR session will be one hour before surgery and sessions two on day 3 evening (around 6pm) postoperatively. Patients who are ventilated on day 3 will be removed from the study and additional patients will be recruited on both groups.
Questionnaires will be handed to the patients pre- and post-surgery in both groups to rate their levels of anxiety and stress level (STAI), physiological assessments, VR experience and VR-absorption (VAS) in intervention group will be recorded.
In addition, we will explore if there is association between salivary cortisol levels as a potential biomarker for stress and self-completed questionnaires anxiety level (STAI). We will obtain four samples of before and after control/VR intervention pre- and post-surgery to see the co-relation.
Study start date: March 2024.
Study end date: July 2024, study completed, in the process of analysis and write up.
Funder: University of Salford Pump Priming Fund
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Team
Prof. Bhuvaneswari Krishnamoorthy (Bibleraaj)
Prof. Rajamiyer Venkateswaran
Mr. Rick Air
Mr. Moslem Abdelghafar
Mr. Angelo Citarella
Mrs. Azita Rajai