Recruiting

Virtual Reality

Sponsor:

Medstar Health Research Institute

Code:

NCT07228377

Conditions

Cancer

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 18+

Healthy Volunteers: Not accepted

Interventions

virtual reality pain therapy

Study Details

Brief summary:

Patients living with cancer commonly have chronic pain due to the disease or to cancer treatments. Virtual reality, a new technology that immerses the user in pleasant, diverting, and exciting virtual environments, may lower chronic cancer pain to improve quality of life and complement need for pain medications like opioids. The investigators aim to learn from patients about the experience of cancer pain, develop a virtual reality prototype specific to cancer pain management, and test the feasibility and acceptability of this technology to improve the cancer pain experience.

Conditions

Cancer

Study ID

NCT07228377

Start date

Dec 1, 2025

Status verified date

Nov, 2025

Completion date

Aug 31, 2026

Anticipated

Primary completion date

Aug 31, 2026

Anticipated

Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 18+

Healthy Volunteers: Not accepted

Inclusion Criteria:

  • age ≥18 years old
  • living with active cancer diagnosis (any solid tumor type)
  • report chronic cancer pain (≥3 months) with baseline severity moderate-severe (i.e., self-report pain score (SRPS) ≥4/10, where 0=no pain, 10=worst pain)
  • prescribed chronic opioid therapies (may be long-acting formulations, short-acting formulations, or both)

Exclusion Criteria:

  • history of intractable nausea/vomiting, motion sickness, seizures/epilepsy, and/or cranial structure abnormalities preventing VR headset use
  • moderate-severe pain of non-cancer etiology (e.g., chronic lumbago)
  • enrolled in another pain study
  • unable to complete surveys in English or Spanish.

Study Design

Enrollment

25 participants

Anticipated

Intervention Model

Single group

Primary purpose

Supportive Care

Interventions and Outcome Measures

Arms

experimental: Virtual reality pain therapy

Interventions

virtual reality pain therapy

DISCOVR virtual reality pain therapy

Primary outcome measure

  • Intervention feasibility [ Time Frame: From enrollment to end of treatment at 7 days ]

Central Contacts and Locations

Central contacts

Hunter Groninger, MD

202-877-7445hunter.groninger@medstar.net

Eloisa Leiva

eloisa.leiva@medstar.net

Locations

MedStar Georgetown Cancer Institute at MedStar Washington Hospital Center

Recruiting

Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States, 20010

Contacts

Eloisa Leiva

(202) 877-5468eloisa.leiva@medstar.net

More Information

Sponsor

Medstar Health Research Institute

Last update posted

Dec 24, 2025

Last verified

Nov, 2025

Keywords

  • cancer pain
  • chronic pain
  • opioid
  • virtual reality
  • technology

Trial information was received from ClinicalTrials.gov and was last updated on 2026-09-10. This information was provided to ClinicalTrials.gov by Medstar Health Research Institute on 2025-12-24.