Pediatric Interventional Radiology Team Uses Virtual Reality to Calm Anxious Patients

For kids who visit the hospital frequently, anxiety around even routine procedures might interfere with each visit and even lead to long-term trauma.

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles’ Interventional Radiology team—one of the most universally visited specialties at the hospital—is working to minimize negative medical experiences using virtual reality (VR) technology. In August, they hired Phoenix Hunt, CHLA’s first embedded hospital VR technologist, to guide and support patients through their procedures using specially designed, procedure-specific VR games.

“In most health care contexts, VR has been used to support patients as a relaxation tool,” explains Joseph Miller, MD, MS, Director of Interventional Radiology. “We’re applying these same types of technologies to pediatrics in a novel way to minimize anxiety, pain, and discomfort and even reduce anesthesia use.”

Most interventional radiology procedures only take a few minutes, but the prep time and setup are much more complex.

“A patient who just needs something to ease the anxiety and discomfort of the procedure ends up having to go without eating all night so we can administer anesthesia in the morning,” explains Dr Miller.

As the medications leave the patient’s system, it can take several hours to fully recover. “That’s a lot logistically for the patient—and for their family and care team—for what is ultimately a five-minute procedure,” he adds. “Our goal is to reduce that footprint for everybody.”

“When you put a headset on somebody in a health care setting, it can transform their mind and immerse them in a completely different environment,” explains Hunt. “It helps detach their anxieties from what they're feeling and experiencing in the real world.”

This phenomenon has been studied extensively by CHLA’s Biobehavioral Pain Lab, led by Jeffrey Gold, PhD, whose research seeks to enhance the standard of care for anxious patients beyond administering medication to ease fear.

“VR can help dampen the brain’s pain receptors,” Hunt says. “Your body is so distracted with other stimuli that it kind of forgets to feel that anxiety or pain that you’d be noticing previously.”

“What we were missing was not so much the technology itself,” says Dr Miller, reflecting on the early days of conceiving the program. “It was the person to help apply the technology in an individualized fashion.”

Hunt studied virtual-reality game design at Savannah College of Art and Design and was drawn to VR applications in health care. “I was perfectly good at designing video games, but I realized I wanted to work in the clinical setting as soon as I started connecting with patients,” he explains.

“The more positive experiences I helped foster, the more I thought, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.’”

As Dr Miller and the team finalized their vision for the VR technologist position, it became clear that CHLA would effectively create the blueprint for future U.S. hospitals. “We’ve yet to encounter another hospital using VR to get patients through procedures with an embedded VR technologist,” Dr Miller says.

The role is made possible by the financial support of the nonprofit Child’s Play, which assists hospitals across the country in a variety of technology adoption initiatives.

“Many hospitals have VR headsets that just sit on the shelf because no one has any idea how to apply them,” says Dr Miller. “Our missing piece at CHLA was Phoenix.”

Currently, Hunt is the only person at CHLA implementing VR during procedures—but the team has big plans to grow the program. “We’re exploring all of the ways VR can be used across departments and patient populations,” Dr Miller shares. “It's not just for us, or even just for our patients—creating additional resources to reduce the work burden on health care team members is a huge deal.”

“We’re trying to turn this program into a living, breathing resource for the entire hospital, where eventually care teams can request a VR technologist’s assistance as needed,” Hunt adds.

Dr Miller and Hunt not only have an ambitious vision for VR technology within CHLA, but also in hospitals across the world. “When I was in school and told people I wanted to explore VR applications in health care, almost everybody told me that it wouldn’t happen for at least another 10 years,” Hunt reflects. “But our work here proves it’s coming a lot faster than people think.”

“I’m thrilled that CHLA is at the forefront of this movement,” adds Dr Miller. “I look forward to spending a lot of time perfecting our operations to make our patients' lives better—and then, hopefully, helping other hospitals do the same.”