A Feasibility Study on Gut-Directed Virtual Reality for Chronic Pain Related to Chronic Pancreatitis

Chronic pancreatitis (CP) is a progressive inflammatory disease of the pancreas leading to fibrosis and permanent functional damage and associated with decreased health-related quality of life (HRQoL), impaired physical function, and frequent hospitalizations. Specifically, patients with CP often suffer from severe pain that impacts physical, social, and emotional wellbeing and leads to lost work productivity. Despite the substantial burden of pain, available therapies are limited in their ability to offer safe and effective analgesia. Although a stepwise approach has been applied to pain management, patients frequently turn to opioids, which can be associated with serious consequences including narcotic bowel syndrome and opioid-induced hyperalgesia. Hence, there is a critical gap in managing pain associated with CP.

Therapeutic virtual reality (VR) has emerged as an evidence-based, drug-free, immersive digital technology with established benefits for managing cognitive, affective, and sensory aspects of chronic pain. Unlike other audiovisual technologies, VR is in its ability to generate meaningful emotional experiences. Users of VR wear a head-mounted display that creates a vivid perception of being transported into immersive and emotionally evocative worlds. By stimulating the visual cortex while engaging other senses, VR distracts users from processing nociceptive stimuli while leveraging principles of CBT to enhance attitudes, beliefs, and cognitions about pain in a durable manner that does not require persistent use of VR once cognitive skills are transferred. Notably, in November of 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized a CBT-based, 8-week, VR treatment course for chronic pain, supported by clinical trials from our team and others revealing evidence of clinical benefits.

Research indicates that VR offers clinical benefits for a variety of GI conditions including disorders of gut-brain interaction, perianal abscesses, sphincter of Oddi dysfunction. Previously, behavioral interventions such as CBT was emphasized by the International Consensus Guidelines for Chronic Pancreatitis in treating CP related pain when patients experience psychological impact of pain and quality of life has decreased. However, there are no existing study examining whether the benefits of therapeutic VR can also improve psychometric, biometric, and other clinical outcomes in CP patients.

This study aims to determine the feasibility of a home-based, standardized, gut-directed, VR CBT for patients with CP pain as well as investigate the preliminary impact of a home-based, standardized, gut-directed, VR CBT on clinical and functional outcomes of patients with CP pain. The study will also aim to isolate the immersive effect of gut-directed VR by comparing it with a non-immersive sham VR for patients with CP pain.