SynthesisEuropean spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society2026
Virtual reality based-rehabilitation for chronic neck pain: an overview of systematic reviews with meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials.
Synthesis in European spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeThis overview of systematic reviews with meta-analysis aimed to synthesize the quality of the evidence of the short-, and intermediate-effects of virtual reality (VR), alone or combined with other interventions, in individuals with chronic neck pain (NP).
methodsCINAHL, Embase, Epistemonikos, PubMed, Scopus, SPORTDiscus, and the Cochrane Library were searched from inception until April 2025. The methodological quality of systematic reviews was assessed using the AMSTAR 2 checklist. The degree of overlap between reviews was calculated.
resultsNine systematic reviews, with over 2,000 participants, were included. The degree of overlap was very high for all outcomes (40%-100%). The findings of the included systematic reviews were inconsistent about the possible impact of VR on pain intensity, disability, and global perceived effect in the short- and intermediate- terms. Overall, the results show that VR-based rehabilitation was no better than control interventions to manage kinesiophobia, health-related quality of life, and cervical kinematics. Positive effects in favor of VR were only found in the short term for patient satisfaction and cervical range of motion.
conclusionNo consistent findings were found in favor of VR-based rehabilitation to manage chronic pain related symptoms in the short- and intermediate- terms. The clinical applicability of these findings is limited by the heterogeneity between reviews in the delivery mode of VR and control interventions, the poor quality of information provided on how VR was delivered, a very high overlap among meta-analyses, and the low/very low certainty of evidence in most meta-analyses when GRADE system was applied. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION NUMBER: OSF Registries, doi: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/AER7J .
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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.