VR Headset for Pain During Pregnancy Termination

Use of virtual reality headsets have been employed in cancer and behavioral medicine fields with moderate success in controlling anxiety stress and pain. The decision to terminate a pregnancy can create significant stress and anxiety. In the US, there are over 900,000 pregnancy terminations each year with many patients undergoing dilation and evacuation with minimal anesthesia. We plan to assess virtual reality headset's ability to decrease pain associated with surgical termination of pregnancy.

Patient's will be recruited from a single outpatient family-planning center. Inclusion criteria include all patients over the age of 18 that are undergoing a surgical termination of pregnancy in the first and second trimester under local and/or conscious sedation anesthesia. Patients under the age of 18 with significant medical comorbidities will be excluded. Patient demographics including age, BMI, obstetric/ gynecology history, and prior terminations will be collected. Patients will be given pre- procedure survey to assess anxiety and stress. The survey will be self-administered with assistance from study personnel. Patients will then be randomized to either the virtual reality headset or no headset. The procedure will be then performed with the headsets on the patients. Amount and type of local anesthesia employed will be recorded. After the procedure (within 1 hour), the individuals will be resurveyed for both stress and anxiety, with the addition of a visual analog scale to assessing pain associated with the procedure. Pre and post vital signs will also be extracted from the chart. The patient as well as the clinician performing the procedure will be masked as to the intervention. We will require 50 patients per arm assuming a 30% reduction in the pain scale (power 80%, 95% CI, with SD of 0.70). Logistic regression will be performed for those comorbidities that may be influence our outcome, such as age, BMI, prior terminations.