Evaluation of the Use of a Virtual Reality Mask During Blood Tests and Prick Tests Performed in Allergic Children Aged 7 to 13 Years: a Multicenter, Randomized Trial

Investigation of food or respiratory allergy is based on prick tests and serum specific immunoglobulin E assays. The nurse often controls the blood test pain but during the skin tests, many children cry, feeling both fear and pain. This traumatic experience will in most cases be repeated during the child's allergic follow-up.

To date, there are few effective means of limiting anxiety and pain associated with prick tests and therefore little research work on this subject.

Immersion in virtual reality (VR) seems to be an interesting way of distraction for children from 7 to 13 years needing this treatment. Indeed, it makes it possible to saturate the sensorially of the child thus reducing the nociceptive perceptions and the anxiety. The choice of VR mask with pediatric program specific seems interesting for this children This is a randomized, open-label, two-armed parallel, multicenter therapeutic trial comparing an analgesic strategy using authorized medical devices (conventional strategy) with a virtual reality mask distraction technique for allergics tests in children from 7 to 13 years old hospitalized in the pediatric consultation of Clermont Ferrand University Hospital and in the day hospital of Saint-Etienne University Hospital

The control arm is the local anesthetic cream (for the blood test) arm with distraction from nurse/parents +/-anesthesic and anxiolytic gas and the experimental arm is the local anesthetic cream + virtual reality mask distraction

The nurse informs and obtains the consent of the child and his parents. Then she measures child's pain and anxiety before the care, during the blood test, at the third prick test and immediately after the care.