Virtual reality to support painful treatments: six headsets offered to young patients at Montpellier University Hospital

Françoise, a childcare worker, and Mandy, a childcare assistant, are learning how to use the headset with Vincent Fernandez. Midi Libre – Edith Lefranc

The Lions Club of La Grande-Motte has financed the purchase of six virtual reality headsets for the pediatric departments of the Lapeyronie University Hospital in Montpellier.

“You can choose the landscape, tropical beaches or rather undergrowth, northern lights, or even underwater corals… If it is necessary to suddenly create a diversion, fireworks can go off…”Vincent Fernandez and Aurélien Renard arrived at the pediatric surgery department of the Lapeyronie hospital in Montpellier with the six virtual reality headsets created by their company Hypno VR. “They were designed by anesthesiologists from Strasbourg” they explained to the first nurses and caregivers in the department who will have to use them with the little patients. The demonstration is convincing, the department did not have them but was able to test these masks which, plunging the child into another universe, will take him away from painful care.

Volunteers from the Lions Club of La Grande Motte went to the CHU this Wednesday to hand out the helmets. Midi Libre – Edith Lefranc

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The purchase of the six masks was made possible thanks to the energy of the Lions Club of La Grande-Motte, whose motto is Act for a child. With two flagship events, the Pyramid Race and the Ferrari meeting, the service club raises money that will finance projects related to childhood. This year, the Grand-Motte Lions raised €55,000, of which €35,000 was used to purchase the virtual reality headsets.

Read also:55,000 euros donated for children: the Grand-Mottois with the big heart of the Lions Club still as effective

A reduction in painkillers

“Our donations are more like €3,000”, smiles Michel Borg, the president of the Lions Club. “But this is our big file! We were very sensitive to the request of the caregivers and to the interest of this tool”. Doctor Nicolas Kalfa, professor of pediatric surgery, expresses his gratitude to the volunteers from Grands-Mottois: “you underestimate the good that you do to children and families. The ideal for us is that the child forgets us, that he has no memory of the care, therefore no future anxiety, we try to be as discreet as possible. Between 3 and 5 years old, the child is very fearful and too young for us to explain to him what we are doing. There, with this tool, we will have another approach, so effective that we will have, I am sure, a reduction in consumption painkillers.”

To begin with, caregivers learn to manage the headset, with the tablet that allows them to follow the images that the child sees live. Sessions of 20 to 30 minutes, with light therapy and music therapy, but also breathing guidance so that, with their mind elsewhere, the little patient is completely relaxed and undergoes unpleasant or painful treatment, without being aware of it.