You need a biopsy, or some other kind of minimally invasive treatment, and you are feeling anxious. Nothing is likely to go wrong, but you're still worried.
Would pre-procedure hypnosis help? Maybe. Soft music? Possibly. But a small study presented Monday at the Society of Interventional Radiology's 39th annual meeting, suggests that donning a pair of video glasses that displays a movie or television show only you can see is likely to help you the most.
"Whether they were watching a children's movie or nature show, patients wearing video glasses were successful at tuning out their surroundings," said David L. Waldman, chairman of the department of imaging sciences at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y., and lead author of the study. "It's an effective distraction technique that helps focus the individual's attention away from the treatment."
While dentists have been using video glasses and TV screens to distract their patients for years, this is the first time the technique has been tested in interventional radiology treatments.