美国国家公共电台 NPR Got Pain? A Virtual Swim With Dolphins May Help Melt It Away（在线收听）

NOEL KING, HOST:

All right. Elsewhere in medical news - doctors and patients have been looking at ways to manage pain without relying so much on opioids. One strategy is called therapeutic virtual reality. NPR's Allison Aubrey has the story of a man who eases his pain by taking a virtual dip with dolphins.

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ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: Imagine for a moment that you are transported to a beautiful, sunlit lagoon. You're invited to dive in. That's what Tom Norris has done.

TOM NORRIS: The water's clear. I see the dolphins swim by, laughing as they are playing. And I get a really strong feeling of relaxation and peace.

AUBREY: He has not left his living room. But when he straps on a virtual reality headset, he's in an alternate universe.

NORRIS: I really feel like I'm there.

AUBREY: Norris is no stranger to pain. He's got chronic pain through his back and hips from injuries that go back years. Now, he says, his weekly swim with the dolphins takes just 10 minutes or so, but the benefits linger for days.

NORRIS: I relax. My attention's diverted. It makes the pain more manageable.

AUBREY: Norris is not alone. A new study documents that virtual reality really can help people with severe pain. Study author Brennan Spiegel of Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles explains he and his collaborators compared the effectiveness of VR with another kind of distraction technique - watching TV.

BRENNAN SPIEGEL: Virtual reality reduced pain by about three times as much as watching TV did.

AUBREY: Using a zero to 10 pain scale, the virtual reality led to a two-point drop compared to just a half point for TV. At the time of the study, all of the participants were in the hospital for various conditions - some had cancer pain, some had orthopedic pain. So VR can't take that pain away entirely, but the evidence shows it does help.

SPIEGEL: It's not that it's cured the underlying disease. You know, it doesn't heal a fractured bone or cure cancer, but it changes the way we perceive the pain.

AUBREY: So researchers say virtual reality is one more tool that people in pain may want to try.

Allison Aubrey, NPR News.

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