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. 2024 Jul 1;9(7):685-699.
doi: 10.1530/EOR-23-0197.

Virtual reality-based therapy for chronic low back and neck pain: a systematic review with meta-analysis

Juan Manuel Henríquez-Jurado  1 , María Catalina Osuna-Pérez  1 , Héctor García-López  2 , Rafael Lomas-Vega  1 , María Del Carmen López-Ruiz  1 , Esteban Obrero-Gaitán  1 , Irene Cortés-Pérez  1
Affiliations

Virtual reality-based therapy for chronic low back and neck pain: a systematic review with meta-analysis

Juan Manuel Henríquez-Jurado et al. EFORT Open Rev. .

Abstract

Purpose: To compile all the scientific evidence available to date to evaluate the effect of virtual reality based therapy (VRBT) on reducing pain intensity, kinesiophobia, and associated disability, and on increasing the hr-QoL in patients with chronic neck pain (CNP) or chronic low back pain (CLBP).

Methods: Studies published in PubMed Medline, SCOPUS, Web of Science, CINAHL Complete, and Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) up to June 2023 were searched. All searches followed the PICOS Framework. Two authors independently screened the studies found in the searches. Any differences of opinion regarding the selection of studies were settled by a third author.

Results: Twenty-five RCTs, published between 2013 and 2022, providing data from 1261 patients (20 RCTs) with CLBP and 261 patients (five RCTs) with CNP, were included. In reducing pain intensity for patients with CLBP, meta-analyses showed that VRBT is effective in reducing pain just to the end of the intervention, and this effect could be maintained 1 and 6 months after the therapy.

Conclusion: VRBT was found to be better than therapeutic exercise (TE), sham, and no intervention (NI), showing a major effect when VRBT was used as a complementary therapy to conventional physiotherapy (CPT). Further, VRBT showed an immediate effect and immersive VRBT was the most adequate VRBT modality in reducing pain in CNP patients. No differences were found between non-immersive VRBT and immersive VRBT in reducing pain, kinesiophobia, disability, and hr-QoL in patients with CLBP.

Keywords: chronic low back pain; chronic neck pain; disability; health related-quality of life; kinesiophobia; virtual reality-based therapy.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the study reported.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
PRISMA flow diagram.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Forest plot for pain intensity in CLBP (59, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Forest plot for pain intensity and CNP (60, 73, 75, 76, 80).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Forest plot for kinesiophobia in CLBP (A) (61, 72, 77, 79, 82, 83) and CNP (B) (79, 80).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Forest plot for disability in CLBP (A) (59, 61, 65, 66, 68, 78, 82, 83) and CNP (B) (60, 73, 75, 76, 80).
Figure 6
Figure 6
Forest plot for health related-quality of life in CLBP (A) (61, 65, 71, 74, 79, 81, 82) and CNP (B) (60, 76).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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