Could Virtual Reality play a role in the rehabilitation after COVID-19 infection?

Abstract

Post-COVID-19 patients, particularly those who needed high care, are expected to have high needs for physical, psychological and cognitive rehabilitation. Yet, the resources needed to provide rehabilitation treatment are expected to be inadequate because healthcare systems faced a shortage of high-quality treatment of these symptoms already before the COVID-19 crisis emerged in patients with comparable needs. In this viewpoint, we discuss the potential of Virtual Reality (VR) administering fast, tailor-made rehabilitation at a distance, and offering a solution for the impending surge of demand for rehabilitation after COVID-19. VR consists of a head-mounted display (HMD) that can bring the user by computer-generated visuals into an immersive, realistic multi-sensory environment. Several studies on VR show its potential for rehabilitation and suggest VR to be beneficial in post-COVID-19. The immersion of VR may increase therapy adherence and may distract the patient from experienced fatigue and anxiety. Barriers still have to be overcome to easily implement VR in healthcare. We argue that embedding VR in virtual care platforms would assist in overcoming these barriers and would stimulate the spread of VR therapy, both for post-COVID-19 patients in the present and possibly for other patients with similar rehabilitation needs in the future.

What Do We Know about The Use of Virtual Reality in the Rehabilitation Field? A Brief Overview

“…Furthermore, VR practice may cause lasting motion sickness, so it is necessary to take care of the patients during and after treatment. Besides, VR may induce eyestrain-related issues such as eye fatigue and discomfort, dryness and redness, and reduced visual acuity, which falls under computer vision syndrome [133,134]. These findings are more frequent when using HMDs, but this significantly depends on the given display characteristics [132,133].…”

“…Another population that likely requires high care for physical, psychological, and cognitive rehabilitation is the post-COVID-19 population. Owing to the unfortunately growing number of cases and consequent healthcare system burden, VRT may facilitate the delivery of fast and tailor-made rehabilitation at a distance [134].…”

Virtual Reality Tailored to the Needs of Post-ICU Patients: A Safety and Immersiveness Study in Healthy Volunteers

“…We hope that by making the script freely available, the community of VR experts and medical experts will be stimulated to develop similar scripts and VR films, which eventually will benefit patients and improve long-term outcomes. Another barrier for implementation might be the lack of a VR platform ( 41 ). A first step for a solid foundation is making tailor-made VR and knowledge freely available.…”

Using Medical Device Standards for Design and Risk Management of Immersive Virtual Reality for At-Home Therapy and Remote Patient Monitoring

“…HMD-based immersive VR has only recently begun to approach the same level of affordability as nonimmersive VR. The sense of presence that immersive VR offers has considerable potential to differentiate the impact of VR in clinical contexts, including telerehabilitation, moving forward [17][18][19]. Critically, immersive VR offers the potential for greater ecological validity in therapy, allowing the brain to respond to stimuli similar to how it does in the real world [20][21][22][23][24].…”