You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Novel treatment (new drug/intervention; established drug/procedure in new situation)
CASE REPORT
Differing effects of an immersive virtual reality programme on unilateral spatial neglect on activities of daily living
  1. Kazuhiro Yasuda1,
  2. Daisuke Muroi2,
  3. Mizuki Hirano2,
  4. Kenta Saichi3,
  5. Hiroyasu Iwata3
  1. 1Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
  2. 2Department of Rehabilitation, Kameda Medical Center, Chiba, Japan
  3. 3Graduate School of Creative Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
  1. Correspondence to Dr Kazuhiro Yasuda, kazuhiro-yasuda{at}aoni.waseda.jp

Summary

In clinical practice, therapists often encounter cases of unilateral spatial neglect (USN) observed in far and near space. In this case report, immersive virtual reality (VR) technology was adopted as a therapy tool in a patient with stroke with severe near and far space neglect. Neuropsychological tests in near and far space as well as the Catherine Bergego Scale (CBS), as an index of neglect in daily living, were measured preintervention and postintervention. Improvement of neuropsychological tests, particularly in far space, was clearly demonstrated postintervention. However, CBS score did not change postintervention. This may be because the patient unsuccessfully translated these visual search task skills used in far space to activities of daily living. Our findings suggest the potential use of immersive VR technology in patients with USN and highlight the VR programme’s limited ability to fully recover a patient’s disability in natural settings.

  • stroke
  • rehabilitation medicine
  • virtual rehabilitation

https://doi.org/10.1136/bcr-2017-222860

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors KY performed the design of this study, acquisition and analysis of data and drafting the manuscript. DM, MH and KS made substantial contributions to the acquisition and analysis of the data. HI was involved in the conception of the system and design of the study. Each of the authors has read and concurs with the content of the final manuscript. No one who qualifies for authorship has been omitted from the list.

    • Funding This study was funded by Global Robot Academia Institute, Waseda University with grant number FY2017, Grant-in-Aid for Junior Researchers, Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Waseda University with grant number Technological Research Section: 16C13.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Obtained.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.