ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Patient satisfaction is an important element of high-quality health care. Virtual reality has been studied for its sedative and analgesic effects, as it immerses the patient into an artificial interactive environment. Deriving from this concept, we hypothesized that an immersive experience that engulfs the senses with noninteractive visual and auditory stimuli would have a positive effect on satisfaction and anxiety in patients undergoing spinal anesthesia. METHODS: We enrolled and randomized 90 patients undergoing spinal anesthesia for arthroscopic knee surgery into an immersive experience arm and an intravenous midazolam sedation arm. The immersive experience was provided through a mobile phone-based head-mounted display showing binocular monoscopic video and noise-canceling headphones playing audio. The primary outcome measure was postoperative satisfaction, measured using a visual analog scale and compared using the Mann-Whitney U test; secondary outcomes included anxiety score (measured using the 6-item State-Trait Anxiety Inventory), hemodynamic stability, and additional sedative requirement. RESULTS: The visual analog scale satisfaction score with immersive experience was significantly higher than with midazolam (median [interquartile range {IQR}] of 93 [82-98] and 80 [73-93], respectively, P = .004), with Hodges-Lehmann median difference estimate of 7 (95% confidence interval, 3-14). The change in anxiety scores from the preoperative to postoperative period between the groups was not significantly different (P = .08), with a Hodges-Lehmann median difference estimate of 3.3 (95% confidence interval, 0-6.7). All patients were hemodynamically stable, were without significant adverse events, and did not require additional sedatives. CONCLUSIONS: We have found that an immersive experience is an effective and acceptable intraoperative alternative to pharmacological sedation in patients undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery under spinal anesthesia, with higher satisfaction levels and no detected difference in preoperative to postoperative anxiolytic effect.
