Congress Abstracts 2006

48

VIRTUAL REALITY INTERVENTION FOR CHEMOTHERAPY SYMPTOMS. Susan Schneider, RN, PhD, AOCN^®, Duke University, Durham, NC.

Successful completion of chemotherapy offers a greater chance for tumor response and quality of life. Many patients have difficulty adhering to the regimen because of chemotherapy-related symptoms. Virtual reality (VR) provides a distracting, immersive environment, which blocks out competing stimuli, ameliorates symptoms, and helps patients tolerate treatments.

To determine the immediate and short-term effects of a VR intervention on symptom distress in adults with lung, colon or breast cancer who were receiving intravenous chemotherapy.

Lazarus and Folkman's Stress and Coping Model identify distraction as a coping strategy for managing stressful situations.

123 adults at Duke University participated in the study. The average participant was 54 years old, female and Caucasian. A crossover design was used to examine VR as a distraction intervention to relieve symptom distress in outpatients receiving chemotherapy and to determine the immediate and 48-hour post-treatment effect on symptom distress. Participants were randomly assigned to receive the VR distraction intervention during one chemotherapy treatment and received no intervention (control) during an alternate matched chemotherapy treatment. The Adapted Symptom Distress Scale-2, Revised Piper Fatigue Scale and State Anxiety Inventory measured symptom distress. The Presence Questionnaire and an open-ended questionnaire were used to evaluate the subjects' VR experience. The influence of age, gender, coping style, and immersive tendency on symptom outcomes was explored. Paired t-tests were used to test for differences in levels of symptom distress: 1) immediately following chemotherapy treatments and 2) 48 hours following the completion of chemotherapy.

Evaluation of the intervention indicated that patients thought the VR was easy to use, they experienced no cybersickness, 86% liked the VR intervention and 82% would use VR again. Patients had an altered perception of time (p<.001) when using the VR, validating the distracting capacity of the intervention. However, analysis demonstrated no significant differences in symptom distress immediately or two days following chemotherapy treatments. Patients stated that using the VR seemed to make treatment time shorter and that chemotherapy treatments with the VR were better. However these positive experiences did not result in a decrease in symptom distress. Findings support the notion that using VR can help make chemotherapy treatments more tolerable, but clinicians should not assume that use of VR will improve chemotherapy related symptoms.

Funding Sources: This study was funded by the Oncology Nursing Foundation through an unrestricted grant from Ortho Biotech Products, L.P. and Duke University Medical Center