美国国家公共电台 NPR Got Pain? A Virtual Swim With Dolphins May Help Melt It Away

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NOEL KING, HOST:

All right. Elsewhere in medical news - doctors and patients have been looking at ways to manage pain without relying so much on opioids. One strategy is called therapeutic¹ virtual reality. NPR's Allison Aubrey has the story of a man who eases his pain by taking a virtual dip with dolphins.

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ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE²: Imagine for a moment that you are transported to a beautiful, sunlit lagoon³. You're invited to dive in. That's what Tom Norris has done.

TOM NORRIS: The water's clear. I see the dolphins swim by, laughing as they are playing. And I get a really strong feeling of relaxation⁴ and peace.

AUBREY: He has not left his living room. But when he straps⁵ on a virtual reality headset, he's in an alternate universe.

NORRIS: I really feel like I'm there.

AUBREY: Norris is no stranger to pain. He's got chronic⁶ pain through his back and hips⁷ from injuries that go back years. Now, he says, his weekly swim with the dolphins takes just 10 minutes or so, but the benefits linger for days.

NORRIS: I relax. My attention's diverted. It makes the pain more manageable.

AUBREY: Norris is not alone. A new study documents that virtual reality really can help people with severe pain. Study author Brennan Spiegel of Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles explains he and his collaborators compared the effectiveness of VR with another kind of distraction⁸ technique - watching TV.

BRENNAN SPIEGEL: Virtual reality reduced pain by about three times as much as watching TV did.

AUBREY: Using a zero to 10 pain scale, the virtual reality led to a two-point drop compared to just a half point for TV. At the time of the study, all of the participants were in the hospital for various conditions - some had cancer pain, some had orthopedic pain. So VR can't take that pain away entirely⁹, but the evidence shows it does help.

SPIEGEL: It's not that it's cured the underlying¹⁰ disease. You know, it doesn't heal a fractured bone or cure cancer, but it changes the way we perceive the pain.

AUBREY: So researchers say virtual reality is one more tool that people in pain may want to try.

Allison Aubrey, NPR News.

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