Hospitals try giving patients a dose of VR
When Deona Duke woke up from a medically-induced coma to begin recovering from burns that covered almost a third of her body, one of her treatments was hurling s**wballs at penguins. The 13-year-old was set on fire when a bonfire exploded on her and her friend. To prevent infection, burn victims need their bandages changed and dead skin scraped away. Sometimes, even morphine isn’t e**ugh to make that tolerable.
At the Shriners Hospital for Children in Galveston, Duke’s doctors gave her a virtual reality headset. Slipping it on, she was immersed in “S**wWorld,” an icy landscape where she got to lob s**w at s**wmen and igloos. The Texas hospital is one of the few trying out virtual reality*to relieve pain.“I’d never heard of it so I was a little surprised,” she said. “When I first tried it, it distracted me from what they were doing so it helped with the pain.” Read more...