ReviewHealth science reports2025
Virtual Reality for Patients With Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain and Disability: An Umbrella Review of Systematic Reviews.
Review in Health science reports, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Virtual reality in neurorehabilitation for musculoskeletal disorders: a bibliometric analysis from 2010 to 2025.Frontiers in neurology · 2026Pooled it
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background and Aim: Virtual reality (VR) has been proposed for the management of chronic musculoskeletal pain (MSKP). This umbrella review aimed to systematically search, critically appraise, summarize, and synthesize the current systematic reviews (SRs) on delivering VR interventions to rehabilitate patients with chronic primary MSKP and disability. Method: Data were obtained from five databases. Only SRs were included. This umbrella review utilized the AMSTAR-2 to assess the methodological quality of the included SRs and the GRADE to assess the certainty in the body of evidence. Results: Seven SRs were included. The overall confidence in the SRs ranged from low to critically low, whereas the certainty in the body of evidence ranged from moderate to very low. Whilst the majority of the SRs suggested that VR, standalone or adjunctive to other interventions, had a significant short-term positive effect on patient-reported outcomes for pain in patients with chronic primary MSKP, results on patient-reported outcomes for disability and kinesiophobia were inconsistent. Adverse events included motion sickness, nausea, and vertigo. Conclusions: Although the current evidence indicates that VR may hold promise in patients with chronic primary MSKP, the included studies suffered from critical weaknesses that precluded this review from drawing a conclusive conclusion. It remains uncertain which VR interventions, including dosage, mode of delivery, supervision, frequency, duration, level of immersion, VR platform, displayed content, and mechanism of action, are more effective than the others. Future SRs should sub-group VR based on the treatment types. Further rigorously designed studies focusing on immersive VR, standalone or adjunctive to other interventions, with long-term follow-up, are warranted. It is worth repeating the call for an agreed consensus on a clear definition and classification of VR within the healthcare context.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.