Effectiveness of Virtual Reality Distraction During Infiltration Anesthesia in Pediatric Patients.

Proper pain control and discomfort reduction during dental treatment, especially among children, can maximize a child's cooperation, overall satisfaction, build a good dentist-patient relationship, and enhance patient compliance. Psychological and pharmaceutical methods, and their combinations have tried to address this pain. Pharmaceutical approaches include the application of topical anesthetics. Psychological and behavioral modification methods including active distractions, deep breathing, Witaul and eye movement distractions. Passive distraction methods, such as audiovisual glasses and video distraction. Other methods, such as precooling the injection site, warming the local anesthesia, and camouflaging the syringe, have also been suggested.

A range of fear management techniques have been described in the literature and American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) has described some concepts as basic behavior guidance such as communication, tell show do, voice control, nonverbal communication, positive reinforcement, distraction and parental absence/presence, and advanced behavior guidance such as protective stabilization, sedation and general anesthesia.

Distraction as a behavior guidance technique is defined by the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) as the technique of diverting the patient's attention from what may be perceived as an unpleasant procedure.

Audiovisual distraction techniques are used in dental clinics and have shown great results in managing anxious pediatric patients.

Virtual reality (VR) distraction, defined as a human-computer interface that enables the user to interact dynamically with the computer- generated environment is a new method in the medical field with the aim of aiding in patient behavior management. It offers the advantage of an immersive virtual experience blocking out external stimuli that may provoke a negative attitude, especially in young patients.