Reducing Brief Thermal and Electrical Pain (Four Study Days)

Overview

Ultimately, the purpose of the present study is to help improve pain control in burn patients during wound care and physical therapy, where pain levels with opioids alone are often excessively high. This study measures how much virtual reality pain distraction reduces pain compared to traditional opioid pain meds, and whether there is additional pain reduction when Virtual Reality distraction + Opioids are combined. In addition to studying the amount of pain reduction, this study will also measure side effects (if any) of the two treatments (Virtual Reality pain distraction and Opioids) alone and when combined. Healthy volunteers will be recruited from advertisements will undergo a trial of the pain testing. They will receive a series of brief stimuli (at a painful but tolerable safe intensities they select and approve during baseline testing), separated by intervals of no pain. Participants will rate how much pain they felt after each brief stimulus, and will fill out side effects questionnaires after finishing the pain session. Subjects will participate in each of the four conditions in which the order is randomized. * No opioids (0ng/ml hydromorphone) + no virtual reality Snow World distraction * No opioids + yes virtual reality Snow World distraction * Moderate dose of pain medicine (4ng/ml hydromorphone) + no virtual reality * Moderate dose of pain medicine + yes virtual reality Snow World distraction It is our hypothesis that VR distraction + opioids will show a reduced perception of pain in subjects more than opioids alone or no intervention (control).

In this study, healthy volunteers aged 18-45 who sign up after seeing a flyer or web posting are screened for exclusion via telephone interview, and if eligible, a health background interview. Initial contact will come from the subject's response to recruitment materials. Subjects may withdraw at any time. These safe laboratory studies with healthy volunteers are designed to help us figure out how to maximize the effectiveness of virtual reality when used with severe burn patients at Harborview Burn Center