With the recent development of
information and communication technology, social interest in
virtual reality (VR) is increasing rapidly. VR
technology is expanding into applications such as games,
movies, entertainment,
healthcare,
education/media, manufacturing, and
construction. In the
healthcare, VR is used for surgical
training,
medical education,
rehabilitation medicine,
pain control, and
treatment for
psychiatric disorder, but the market size of VR in
healthcare is not big compared to VR application in other
industries. However, as the demand for high-quality
medical care increases and the
training time of the resident
physicians is reduced, the demand for VR in the
healthcare is expected to increase rapidly. Especially, the
nose and paranasal sinus are composed of complicated osseous structures, which makes it difficult to understand the exact
anatomy and requires highly skilled
techniques to perform accurate and safe
surgery. For this reason,
nose and sinus are a suitable field to apply VR
technology. In this
review article, we describe the overview of VR
technology used in
healthcare, the status and prospects of VR in endoscopic sinus
surgery and facial
plastic surgery.