[Boudica]

A new therapy, called EaseVRx that is used to treat chronic back pain, has been approved by the FDA (America's Food and Drug Administration).

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EaseVRx includes a VR headset and a device that amplifies the sound of the user’s breath to assist in breathing exercises. It uses principles from cognitive behavior therapy, which aims to help people recognize and understand various thought patterns and emotions. The program addresses pain through relaxation, distraction, and improved awareness of internal signals, the FDA said in its statement.

The FDA authorized EaseVRx based on data from an eight-week study in 179 people with low back pain that had lasted six months or longer. Half used the EaseVRx program and half participated in another, two-dimensional virtual reality program that did not use cognitive behavioral therapy methods. Around two-thirds of participants using EaseVRx said they had more than 30 percent reduction in pain, while only 41 percent of the control group had a similar reduction. The reduced pain lasted for up to three months after the study for people in the EaseVRx group but not for the control group.

The VR system could be an alternative option to opioid medications for back pain, Christopher Loftus, acting director of the Office of Neurological and Physical Medicine Devices at the FDA, said in a statement. Research shows that psychological approaches can be effective treatments for chronic pain for some people, and proponents stress that targeting those components to pain doesn’t mean the pain is any less real. Still, cognitive behavioral therapy for pain is sometimes controversial and efforts to integrate it into standard care have been met with worries that it’ll be used as an excuse to pull people off needed medications.

It looks like there could be a lot of pros and cons to this therapy. I would also question the study as the article describes the study in a way that implies the VR therapy used CBT and the 2D therapy did not. Perhaps the result differences could be attributed to the program for the therapy, moreso than the VR itself.