by Raphael Romano
Bruno, Georg Wolff, Bernhard Wernly, Maryna Masyuk, Kerstin Piayda, Susannah
Leaver, Ralf Erkens, Daniel Oehler, Shazia Afzal, Houtan Heidari, Malte Kelm
and Christian Jung
Critical Care volume 26,
Article number: 326 (2022)
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are
aspiring, new technologies with increasing use in critical care medicine. While
VR fully immerses the user into a virtual three-dimensional space, AR adds
overlaid virtual elements into a real-world environment. VR and AR offer great
potential to improve critical care medicine for patients, relatives and health
care providers. VR may help to ameliorate anxiety, stress, fear, and pain for
the patient. It may assist patients in mobilisation and rehabilitation and can
improve communication between all those involved in the patient’s care. AR can
be an effective tool to support continuous education of intensive care medicine
providers, and may complement traditional learning methods to acquire key
practical competences such as central venous line placement, cardiopulmonary
resuscitation, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation device management or
endotracheal intubation. Currently, technical, human, and ethical challenges
remain. The adaptation and integration of VR/AR modalities into useful clinical
applications that can be used routinely on the ICU is challenging. Users may
experience unwanted side effects (so-called “cybersickness”) during VR/AR
sessions, which may limit its applicability. Furthermore, critically ill
patients are one of the most vulnerable patient groups and warrant special
ethical considerations if new technologies are to be introduced into their
daily care. To date, most studies involving AR/VR in critical care medicine
provide only a low level of evidence due to their research design. Here we
summarise background information, current developments, and key considerations
that should be taken into account for future scientific investigations in this
field.
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