Chronic Low Back Pain
Conditions
Keywords
Chronic Low Back Pain, Virtual Reality, Serious Gaming, Exercise Therapy, Distraction
Brief summary
Immersion in a virtual reality environment has been shown to reduce pain during a variety of painful medical procedures, such as wound care for burn patients and dental care. Often, serious games are used to distract patients from this painful procedures. Recently, serious games have also been developed for patients with low back pain. Because patients with low back pain frequently experience pain during exercises, the investigators hypothesize that exercising with serious games can reduce the pain intensity and the time spent thinking of pain during exercises. To test this hypothesis, the investigators will conduct a randomized controlled trial where two groups will be compared: the experimental group will perform one session of exercises with serious games, while the control group will perform one session of the same exercises without the serious games.
Interventions
OTHERConventional exercise group (control group)
OTHERVirtual reality exercise group
Sponsors
Jessa Hospital
Hasselt University
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
OTHER
Masking
NONE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to 65 Years
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
* Chronic non-specific low back pain, with or without referred pain to the legs * Age 18-65 * Able to understand Dutch * A minimum pain intensity of 3/10 on the numeric pain rating scale at the time of the test * Being familiar with pelvic tilt exercises
Exclusion criteria
* Spinal surgery in the past * Pregnancy * Serious underlying pathologies (e.g. multiple sclerosis, tumors,…) * Signs or symptoms of nerve root involvement * Known skin-allergy for tape
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Average pain intensity during exercises using the numeric pain rating scale | Day 1 | Immediately after the intervention, patients will be asked to indicate the average pain they experienced during the exercises using the numeric pain rating scale (0-10) |
| Time spent thinking of the pain using a numeric rating scale | Day 1 | Immediately after the intervention, patients will be asked to indicate the average time they spent thinking of their pain during the exercises using a numeric rating scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 10 (all the time) |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Pain intensity after the exercises using a numeric rating scale | Day 1 | Patients will be asked to indicate their pain immediately after the exercises using the numeric pain rating scale (0-10) |
| Harmfulness of the exercises using a numeric rating scale | Day 1 | Immediately after the intervention, patients will be asked to indicate how harmful they thought the exercises were for their lumbar spine on a numeric rating scale ranging from 0 (not harmful at all) to 10 (extremely harmful). |
Other
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of pelvic tilts | Day 1 | During the exercises the pelvis and lumbar spine of the participants will be recorded with a digital videocamera to capture the number of pelvic tilts during the exercises. This outcome measure will primarily be used as possible covariate |
| Immersion (questionnaire will be used to measure the level of immersion) | Day 1 | Immediately after the intervention, the immersive experience questionnaire will be used to measure the level of immersion |
Countries
Belgium
Outcome results
None listed