Chronic pain due to disease or injury is common, and even prescription pain medications cannot provide acceptable pain relief for many individuals, researchers said.
Researchers from the Virtual Reality Medical Institute, Belgium and Virtual Reality Medical Centre, California, created pleasant virtual experiences that patients could navigate through in simulated worlds to distract them from pain.
They reported both the patients' subjective ratings of relief and how those compared to physiological measurements to assess pain responses.
In another study, researchers from Spain reported significant improvement in multiple factors affecting quality of life for patients with fibromyalgia syndrome, a chronic musculoskeletal pain condition.
"Studies have shown that VR can be an effective adjunct for both chronic and acute pain conditions," said Brenda K Wiederhold, editor-in-chief of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behaviour, and Social Networking that published the studies.