Virtual Reality and Pain Perception During Exercises for Patients With Chronic Non-specific Low Back Pain

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Chronic Low Back Pain

• Registration Number: NCT02679300
• Lead Sponsor: Hasselt University

Brief Summary

Immersion in a virtual reality environment has been shown to reduce pain during a variety of painful medical procedures, such as wound care for burn patients and dental care. Often, serious games are used to distract patients from this painful procedures. Recently, serious games have also been developed for patients with low back pain. Because patients with low back pain frequently experience pain during exercises, the investigators hypothesize that exercising with serious games can reduce the pain intensity and the time spent thinking of pain during exercises. To test this hypothesis, the investigators will conduct a randomized controlled trial where two groups will be compared: the experimental group will perform one session of exercises with serious games, while the control group will perform one session of the same exercises without the serious games.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2016-01
• Study First Submitted: 2016-02-04
• Study First Submitted QC: 2016-02-06
• Study First Posted: 2016-02-10
• Primary Completion: 2018-09
• Study Completion: 2018-09
• Status Verified: 2020-06
• Last Update Submitted: 2020-06-18
• Last Update Posted: 2020-06-22

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 84

Inclusion Criteria

• Chronic non-specific low back pain, with or without referred pain to the legs
• Age 18-65
• Able to understand Dutch
• A minimum pain intensity of 3/10 on the numeric pain rating scale at the time of the test
• Being familiar with pelvic tilt exercises

Exclusion Criteria

• Spinal surgery in the past
• Pregnancy
• Serious underlying pathologies (e.g. multiple sclerosis, tumors,...)
• Signs or symptoms of nerve root involvement
• Known skin-allergy for tape

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Average pain intensity during exercises using the numeric pain rating scale	Day 1	Immediately after the intervention, patients will be asked to indicate the average pain they experienced during the exercises using the numeric pain rating scale (0-10)
Time spent thinking of the pain using a numeric rating scale	Day 1	Immediately after the intervention, patients will be asked to indicate the average time they spent thinking of their pain during the exercises using a numeric rating scale ranging from 0 ("not at all") to 10 ("all the time")

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Pain intensity after the exercises using a numeric rating scale	Day 1	Patients will be asked to indicate their pain immediately after the exercises using the numeric pain rating scale (0-10)
Harmfulness of the exercises using a numeric rating scale	Day 1	Immediately after the intervention, patients will be asked to indicate how harmful they thought the exercises were for their lumbar spine on a numeric rating scale ranging from 0 ("not harmful at all") to 10 ("extremely harmful").

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Hasselt University; 🇧🇪 Hasselt, Belgium