Purposes and characteristics of virtual reality technologies for the elderly in the community: a scoping review.
Jamylle Lucas Diniz, Natalia Maria Cavalcante Oliveira, Janaina Fonseca Victor Coutinho and 3 others
PMID 39607177WHAT IT FOUND
Community older adults used VR for balance, gait, strength, cognition, mood, and leisure.
Devices included screens, Kinect, goggles, and sensors; only four studies reported dizziness, nausea or anxiety, so safety reporting was incomplete.
Key findings
01The mapped VR uses focused on improving or rehabilitating balance, gait, posture, range of movement, cognition, mood, and social aspects in older adults.
02Non-immersive VR used screens, computers, mice, videos, joysticks, or Kinect, while immersive VR used goggles and sensors with breaks to avoid cyber-sickness.
03Most included studies did not report discomfort; four reported dizziness, nausea, or anxiety, and all adverse-effect reports came from immersive devices.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
This is a scoping review, so it maps what VR was used for and how devices were described; it does not test whether VR improves outcomes. The included studies were heterogeneous in VR type, purpose, session length, and duration, so they could not be compared equally. Most studies did not report discomfort from VR, and only four reported adverse effects, making safety hard to judge. The review excluded hospital and long-term care settings, so it says little about older adults in institutional care. No total number of older-adult participants across the 20 studies is given. Only one included study involved nurses, so the review provides little direct evidence about nurse-delivered VR care.
Declared interests
No conflict-of-interest or funding statement is included in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that VR improves balance, cognition, mood, or quality of life in older adults. This is a scoping review of 20 articles, not a trial of efficacy, and most included studies did not report discomfort.