East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust

Chronic shoulder pain is a debilitating condition that significantly impacts quality of life, daily functioning, and mental well-being. For individuals awaiting surgical intervention for a long period, prolonged pain often leads to heightened psychological distress, poor sleep quality, and reduced overall health outcomes. Innovative approaches are urgently needed to address these challenges and improve preoperative management.
This study will combine 2 technologies which have both been shown to help relax and calm users.
Transcutaneous Auricular Vagus Nerve Stimulation (taVNS) is
* a gentle non-invasive therapy that uses a small device to send tiny electrical pulses to a spot on your outer ear. The principle of using electrical pulses are similar to pacemaker or TENS machines.
* These pulses help stimulate a special nerve called the vagus nerve, which is like a superhighway between your brain and your body
Your vagus nerve helps control:
* Your mood and anxiety levels
* Healing of nerves and other organs in the body
* How your body handles pain
* Digestion, heart rate, and more By stimulating the vagus nerve, taVNS can help your body relax, reset, and feel better.
While virtual reality (VR) has demonstrated effectiveness in distracting from pain and improving psychological resilience.
These two will be combined so that the participant experiences a relaxing VR environment that helps them control their breathing while receiving taVNS. With the aim of managing chronic pain by targeting both physical and psychological dimensions.
This study aims to evaluate the feasibility and safety, of a trial of taVNS paired with VR looking at trial recruitment, retention and compliance. Secondary to this the study will look to see if there is evidence of taVNS +VR in reducing pain, enhancing psychological well-being, and improving quality of life for individuals with chronic shoulder pain awaiting surgery. It will provide critical insights into the potential of this combined intervention as a preoperative and potentially post operative pain management strategy.

Virtual reality (VR) headsets (like those used in gaming) allow users to feel immersed in an artificial 3 dimensional environment. The user is able to look around within the environment and interact with it.
Virtual reality has been used extensively in video games and also in training eg in flight simulators used to train pilots.
There is now a growing use of VR in a clinical setting as virtual reality environments have been designed to help users relax and reduce anxiety or distract and reduce pain. Trials have shown that these can work in many situations including helping relax staff who are working in highly stressful situations, or to distract and help reduce pain in patients following injuries or during minor operations. The relaxation environments use pictures and sounds to create calm environments and can guide users in breathing exercises which help calm and relax. This study is to investigate whether it will be possible to do a study using a VR headset with a relaxation experience, in the days following abdominal surgery that leads to a reduction in anxiety and pain.
Two groups of patients will be studied, one group will use the head set twice a day for up to 5 days and the other will not. They will record their pain and anxiety on a scale of 1 to 10 every day. The amount of pain reducing medicines that they need will also be recorded. The patients will be randomly divided into the 2 groups, they will not get to choose.
The researchers will see whether patients are happy to use the headsets following surgery and at the end of the study, the pain and anxiety scores for the group which used the VR headset will be compared with the scores for the group that didn't.

Recent technological innovations have enabled the creation of portable and easy-to-wear sensors with incredible potential to alter the clinical practice of rehabilitation. Using wearable sensors we have gathered preliminary data in the clinical setting measuring walking ability and function. Preliminary data shows that these wearable sensors can detect improvements in walking ability and function after a 12-week physiotherapy exercise programme in boys with haemophilia. In this proposal, we want to test the use of these wearable sensors in the patient's home to remotely monitor joint health and the effects of rehabilitation for people with haemophilia. We expect that wearable sensor technology is an efficient and promising tool to evaluate and monitor joint health and pain in persons with haemophilia. If usable in the home setting, the wearable sensors have the potential to provide immediate real-time feedback on joint health and rehabilitation goals to the patient and their haemophilia care team without the patient having to leave their home. The project will also support educational activities with researchers and patients to ensure that the use of this new type of rehabilitation will be fully integrated with their future treatment and management.