Virtual reality headsets could soon be given to women in childbirth and abortions

Virtual reality headsets successfully reduced anxiety and pain for women during childbirth and abortions. 

In the first phase of a major new trial testing VR in childbirth at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, all of the women involved said the experience left them less anxious, and most (57 percent) said it reduced their pain. 

Another study, at UCLA, found women who used VR headsets for more than five minutes during an abortion in the first trimester felt less anxious.   

The studies, being presented at this week’s annual conference for the American College of Gynecology, represent small but significant steps towards a very different approach to dealing with pain, anxiety, excitement and fear in pregnant women. 

Cedars-Sinai’s VR for childbirth trial used an experience by AppliedVR, designed by a doula, Ana Paula Merckel, who has 20 years’ experience in ‘hypnobirthing’. One of the three stages involves a blossoming tree

The first virtual reality experiences designed to distract from pain started emerging in the last few years, largely to treat acute pain and burns.  

Despite the high cost of the devices – around $700 per headset – the concept quickly gained attention as a way to treat chronic pain instead of opioids, as addiction rates continue to climb. 

Now, with the innovation of much cheaper paper headsets, the potential is even greater – and medics of all fields are starting to investigate how they could use it. 

The vision of wards decked out with women wearing headsets may seem sci-fi and a world away from what we think would qualify for a ‘natural’ birthing experience. 

But doulas like Ana Paula Merckel, who has 20 years’ experience in ‘hypnobirthing’ and helped design an ‘experience’ for LA-based company AppliedVR, is all for it as a tool to help women with visualizations.

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It’s obstetricians like Dr Melissa Wong, the lead OBGYN testing VR for childbirth at Cedars Sinai, who weren’t sold on the idea.  

‘I’m very practical, I take a scientific and evidence-based approach to everything,’ Dr Wong told DailyMail.com. ‘I was coming to it as a bit of a skeptic.’

But when she was approached by directors at Cedars Sinai about pioneering a study on VR in the delivery room, she was eager to see if there was any merit to it.

Many women, left concerned by now largely-debunked studies, try to avoid an early epidural, which they fear could lengthen their labor or have dangerous consequences. Some simply want to keep their experience as natural as possible.  

‘There are many things that women are offered and, quite frankly, sold as things you can do in labor to avoid or delay an epidural,’ Dr Wong said.  

‘I wanted to see whether it was going to be beneficial.

‘Patients want alternatives. It’s not so much that I need to have a reason to avoid an epidural but I want to provide something to women that want an alternative.’   

Developing VR for pregnancy, though, is a different equation than developing VR for other kinds of anxiety-inducing pain. 

Therapeutic VR started as a way to distract from intrinsic pain – such as a broken leg, or a root canal – which isn’t leading to anything. 

The standard video sends patients floating in an ocean with manatees, basking in some unrelated music in the background. 

Dr Wong – and others exploring VR for childbirth – felt that was incongruous.  

For women delivering a baby, Dr Wong said, ‘it’s so critical that the VR relates to the experience of labor.’ 

Doulas like Merckel are all for VR, and she thinks more experiences should be designed to provide pre-natal training for women, rather than the talks and books they currently have

‘It’s a very different sort of pain than getting through burn or procedural – this is a very much more directed towards something, a specific goal.

‘So it’s different to getting at something that’s intrinsically painful or not towards something.’

They used AppliedVR’s three-stage experience, devised by Merckel and a team of software developers through interviews with pregnant women and new mothers. 

It features composed music, meditative words read by an actor after auditioning hundreds for the role, and images of earth, water and fire.

Women are taken to a beach with lightly drifting water, to a gently burning campfire in the ground, and finally a blooming pink tree, the design for which is based on a print of a placenta.  

‘We wanted imagery to help someone go into relaxation mode but to help them stay connected to the experience,’ Merckel told DailyMail.com.

‘We don’t want them to forget they are about to have a child but to connect with that, bonding with the baby, imagining what the baby was going through, visualizing what your body is doing. It’s not escapism, it’s to go a little bit deeper into your own experience.’

It’s more complicated for an abortion, a shorter and less varied procedure than childbirth, and often a more nuanced emotional experience. 

Some women may have an induced abortion – delivering an inviable fetus – due to severe fetal abnormalities, and they may see their fetus as a baby, and the abortion as a birth. 

For some, who may not be able to raise a child or may not feel a maternal connection, a visceral immersive vision may, in turn, be anxiety-inducing. 

The UCLA study on VR for abortion used the same AppliedVR experience but not pointedly – it was available. 

Aparna Sridhar, MD, the OBGYN at UCLA leading the study on VR in abortions, said separate, interview-based studies are needed to investigate whether it’s possible to develop a VR experience that would be universally applicable for all women. 

‘Pregnancy termination is such a sensitive time in their life,’ Dr Sridhar told DailyMail.com. 

‘Our goal was to see if there was a change in anxiety. We didn’t dive into that part [of how VR connects or disconnects from the experience] just yet. We will need much more in-depth interviews about the content of the VR to analyze that.’  

The fact that the VR has shown to have a marked effect on patients’ experiences in so many ways shows just how influential the images themselves can be – and just how important it is to vet them as we would any other drug, Dr Wong says. 

‘We need to test everything.

‘VR is the syringe. We still need to run the trials on what’s in the syringe just as we would the medicines themselves.

‘This is just a look at little early piece at the qualitative experience from the patient describing their experience of VR.

‘There’s so much more to be done.’