Virtual Reality in the Rehabilitation of Patients with Injuries and Diseases of Upper Extremities

Pinar Tokgöz; Susanne Stampa; Dirk Wähnert; Thomas Vordemvenne; Christoph Dockweiler

doi:10.3390/healthcare10061124

Virtual Reality in the Rehabilitation of Patients with Injuries and Diseases of Upper Extremities

Healthcare (Basel). 2022 Jun 16;10(6):1124. doi: 10.3390/healthcare10061124.

Authors

Pinar Tokgöz^{1

2}, Susanne Stampa², Dirk Wähnert³, Thomas Vordemvenne³, Christoph Dockweiler²

Affiliations

¹ School of Public Health, Bielefeld University, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany.
² Department of Digital Health Sciences and Biomedicine, School of Life Sciences, University of Siegen, 57068 Siegen, Germany.
³ Department for Trauma Surgery and Orthopedics, Protestant Hospital of Bethel Foundation, 33617 Bielefeld, Germany.

Abstract

Upper-extremity injuries and diseases rarely have life-threatening consequences, but failure to manage them properly can result in severe dysfunction. This article presents the current state of using virtual reality to support the rehabilitation process of patients with injuries and diseases of the upper extremities and points out their effects on upper-extremity functions. A scoping review was conducted to provide a comprehensive overview of the field of virtual reality for upper-extremity rehabilitation. PubMed, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library were searched by two independent researchers between April and May 2021 to identify relevant publications and were examined according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. As a result of the literature review, 11 studies of various target groups were identified. Virtual-reality technologies were categorized into multisensory high-end systems and game-based systems. With respect to functional recovery, technologies based on virtual reality were not inferior to traditional rehabilitation. In addition, the users were highly motivated and satisfied. The results emphasize the need for stronger evidence-based virtual-reality technologies for rehabilitation of injuries and diseases of upper extremities.

Keywords: rehabilitation; upper extremity; virtual reality; virtual rehabilitation.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This project was financially supported by a grant from the Medical Research Start-Up Fund of the Medical School OWL. The Medical School OWL played no role in the planning and conceptualization of the manuscript, did not participate in the writing of the manuscript, and played no role in the decision to submit the manuscript. We acknowledge support for the publication costs by the Open-Access Publication Fund of Bielefeld University and the German Research Foundation (DFG).