Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for the Treatment of Dental Phobia

• Register: ANZCTR
• Last refreshed on: 3 April 2017
• Main ID: ACTRN12617000446369
• Date of registration: 27/03/2017
• Prospective Registration: No
• Primary sponsor: ACTA Amsterdam
• Public title: Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for the Treatment of Dental Phobia
• Scientific title: Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for the Treatment of Dental Phobia: A Controlled Multiple Baseline Study
• Date of first enrolment: 6/03/2015
• Target sample size: 10
• Recruitment status: Completed
• URL: http://www.anzctr.org.au/ACTRN12617000446369.aspx
• Study type: Interventional
• Study design: Randomised controlled trial Parallel
• Phase: Not Applicable

Health Condition(s) or Problem(s) studied

Dental phobia

Dental anxiety

Intervention(s)

Participants in this group were exposed to five different virtual reality (VR) scenarios sequentially in a pre-determined hierarchy using a head mounted device (HMD) and a heart rate wrist band.
1) Sitting passively on the dental chair (no tools).
2) Inspection of the oral cavity using mouth mirror.
3) Introduction of an injection.
4) Introduction of drill without sound
5) Introduction of drill with sound
VRET was conducted utilizing two networked computers of which the VR-simulator computer (Dell XPS-8700 desktop with 4th Generation Intel Core i7-4790 processor (8M Cache, up to 4.0 GHz) and ASUS NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 750 TI OC 2GB GDDR5 graphic card) rendered the virtual environment and the other User interface-computer allowed the researcher to control and individualize the VR stimuli presented to the patient. An Oculus development kit 2 HMD (Head Mounted Display) with a resolution of 960X1080 per eye was used to immerse the participants in the VR dental environment. A Mio-link wrist band was used to record the HR of the VRET participants in real-time during therapy.
The entire VR treatment was administered in a single session.
During the exposure session the level of discomfort/distress is assessed using Subjective Units of Distress (SUD) scale every 35 seconds for each scenario. The exposure with each VR scenario was repeated until a SUD score of less than or equal to 2 is obtained before proceeding to the next scenario. Also, the heart rate is monitored continuously during the exposure to determine the physiological response during virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET). Further, the VR experience is evaluated during and following VRET.