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Letter to Editor Volume 13 Issue 2
Virtual reality premedication in dental procedures
Tomasz „Tomi” Kupka 
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DMD, PhD. Dental and Physiotherapeutic Practice, Ruda Śląska, Poland.
Correspondence: Tomasz „Tomi” Kupka, Dental and Physiotherapeutic Practice, ul. Kochłowicka 3, Ruda Śląska, Poland, Tel +48 32 2420367
Received: June 30, 2022 | Published: July 8, 2022
Citation: Kupka ‘‘T”T. Virtual reality premedication in dental procedures. J Dent Health Oral Disord Ther. 2022;13(2):39 DOI: 10.15406/jdhodt.2022.13.00568
Letter to Editor
The term “virtual” originates from Latin virtus “potency” which gained through ages the meaning from “capable of producing a certain effect, though not actually or in fact” to computer sense of “not physically existing but made appear by software”. The term reality derived from Latin res “matter” means “actually existing, having physical existence”. Thus, virtual reality is a simulated experience that can be similar to or completely different from the real world. The term “premedication”, that means preliminary medication, originates from Latin prae “before” or limen “threshold/limit” and medication “heal/cure”, yet its definition is not as simple as just those two words.
Traditionally, premedication used pharmaceutical drug with a sedative, analgesic, as well as antibiotic, antiemetic or antihistamine before treatment/surgery. It is commonly associated with local or general anesthesia. Non-drug premedication, supporting the classic one, is including a variety of distraction methodologies, from calming to focusing multimodal stimulations, visual, auditory, tactile or olfactory ones.
There are two major perspectives to which the term virtual reality premedication1 is applied: the virtual reality perspective that focuses on synthetic technology software, head-mounted display or headphones with noise reduction and immersive movies, and the premedication perspective that focuses more specifically on reduction of anxiety or pain, promotion of amnesia, reduction of secretion, enhancing hypnotic effects.
My experience of using distraction dates back to 1992, when during dental procedures I played music to my patients through Walkman headphones. For two years I have been using intraoperatively an advanced tool, which is immersive virtual reality in head mounted display. The effectiveness of this kind of non-drug premedication method prompted to write this open letter to my professional community.
In recent years2–5, it was emphasized the neuroscience role with its progress knowledge regarding the connectivity of brain and behavior, pain modulation, or interplay between biology and psychology, in virtual reality development as a viable complementary treatment approach. Praise is due to authors engaged in virtual reality medical application to improve the comfort of patients during dental procedures, for shearing their ideas and experiences; ideas that give us plenty of “food for thought” to learn from the nature power of brain and encouraging us to practicing or research.
Acknowledgments
I sincerely thank all my patients, colleagues, friends and family for the trust during 30 years of my practice.
Conflicts of interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest.
References
- Baytar C. Is Virtual Reality a Non-pharmacological Premedication? Clinical Trials Gov. Identifier. Zonguldak Bulent Ecevit University. 2020.
- Hoffman HG, Patterson DR, Carrougher GJ, et al. The Effectiveness of Virtual Reality Pain Control with Multiple Treatments of Longer Durations: A Case Study. Int J Hum Comp Interact. 2001;13(1):1–12.
- Wismeijer AA, Vingerhoets AJ. The use of virtual reality and audiovisual eyeglass systems as adjunct analgesic techniques: a review of the literature. Ann Behav Med. 2005;30(3):268–278.
- Mahrer NE, Gold JI. The use of virtual reality for pain control: a review. Curr Pain Headache Rep. 2009;13(2):100–109.
- Wiederhold MD, Gao K, Wiederhold BK. Clinical use of virtual reality distraction system to reduce anxiety and pain in dental procedures. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2014;17(6):359–365.
©2022 Kupka. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially.