![]() ![]() Spiegel, who has the slim build of someone who runs marathons (he has finished 18 of them), fastened a black V.R. ![]() product to be marketed for the treatment of chronic pain. In November, the Food and Drug Administration gave authorization for the first V.R. segment in health care alone, which according to some estimates is already valued at billions of dollars, is expected to grow by multiples of that in the next few years, with researchers seeing potential for it to help with everything from anxiety and depression to rehabilitation after strokes to surgeons strategizing where they will cut and stitch. Virtual reality is emerging as an unlikely tool for solving this intractable problem. As Daniel Clauw, who runs the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center at the University of Michigan, put it in a 2019 lecture, there isn’t “any drug in any chronic-pain state that works in better than one out of three people.” He went on to say that nonpharmacological therapy should instead be “front and center in managing chronic pain - rather than opioids, or for that matter, any of our drugs.” ![]() By some measures, 50 million Americans live with chronic pain, in part because the power of medicine to relieve pain remains woefully inadequate. It is one of the leading causes of long-term disability in the world. ![]() She rated her pain an 8 on a 10-point scale, with 10 being the most severe.Ĭhronic pain is generally defined as pain that has lasted three months or longer. Eventually, following a series of tests that failed to reveal any clear cause, she landed in Spiegel’s office. After undergoing back surgery in September to treat a herniated disc - and after the constant ache in her abdomen worsened - she had to stop working as a housecleaner. Eighteen months earlier, pain seized her lower abdomen and never went away. Monterroso is 55 and petite, with youthful bangs and hair clipped back by tiny jeweled barrettes. Spiegel saw Monterroso in his clinic the week before and thought he might be able to help alleviate her symptoms. He started the program in 2015 after the hospital received a million-dollar donation from an investment banker on its board. Monterroso was there to see Brennan Spiegel, a gastroenterologist and researcher at Cedars-Sinai who runs one of the largest academic medical initiatives studying virtual reality as a health therapy. Īfter an hour-and-a-half bus ride last November, Julia Monterroso arrived at a white Art Deco building in West Hollywood, just opposite a Chanel store and the Ivy, a restaurant famous for its celebrity sightings. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. ![]()
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