A Review about the Effectiveness of Virtual Therapy in the Recovery of Patients with Spinal Cord Injuries

Background: A spinal cord injury usually results in a significant limitation in the functional outcomes implying a challenge to the performance of activities of daily living. The main aim of this study is to analyze the effectiveness of virtual reality to improve functional performance in patients with spinal cord injury. Methods: International virtual libraries such as ISI-Thomson Web of Science and Purpose have been accessed in this article. The search criteria selected were “title”, “abstract” and “keywords”. Within the platforms of the Scopus virtual library, the keywords in the search for articles were “Spinal Cord virtual reality”. Results: Within this search, a number of 327 articles from 1996–2021 were identified. Within the platforms of the ISI Thomson Web of Science virtual library, the keywords in the search for articles were “Spinal cord virtual reality”. Within this search, a number of seventy-seven articles from 2017–2021 were identified. In order to create the article, only the articles that had the direction of researching spinal cord injury rehabilitation using virtual reality were selected. The results were inconclusive for other results. Conclusions: Most of the studies analyzed did not confirm beneficial effects on functional performance compared to conventional physical therapy programs. The results showed that virtual reality does not prove to be more effective than conventional physical therapy programs in improving functional performance in patients with spinal cord injury, but taken together and acting as a complementary package the results are much more. As can be seen in the articles that tried to demonstrate the effectiveness of the product, the studies used a small number of patients, which is statistically irrelevant. The authors preferred to integrate these devices into the patient rehabilitation process but to use an irrelevant number of patients, so that they do not gain statistical relevance.

virtual reality; spinal cord injury; rehabilitation; physical therapy

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