Virtual forest walk and classical music accelerated blood pressure reduction in emergency patients

A virtual walk through a forest combined with classical music helped patients with severely elevated blood pressure lower it more quickly during the first 15 minutes of treatment. This was the finding of a randomized study presented at the European Congress of Emergency Medicine, according to the European Society for Emergency Medicine (EUSEM).

The study involved 130 adult patients who presented to an emergency department with hypertensive urgency — significantly elevated blood pressure without signs of acute organ damage. All of them received standard medical treatment.

Then, 65 patients in the intervention group put on VR headsets. They found themselves in a virtual natural landscape: a river flowed among tall trees, and a wooden suspension bridge stretched across the forest. At the same time, the patients listened to classical music through a smartphone, including works by Bach, Mozart, Debussy, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns, Haydn and Corelli. The other 65 participants, who made up the control group, received no additional intervention.

The researchers measured blood pressure at 15, 30, 60, 90 and 120 minutes. They assessed mean arterial pressure (MAP), a measure that reflects the average pressure of blood in the arteries throughout the cardiac cycle.

After 15 minutes, mean blood pressure had decreased in the control group.

At the same time, the VR session was accompanied by a reduction in anxiety. At the beginning of the study, however, participants in the intervention group were, on average, more anxious than those in the control group. During the observation period, the anxiety score associated with emotional reactivity decreased by about eight points in the VR group, compared with four points in the control group.

The authors suggest that the effect may be related to reduced anxiety. Strong anxiety activates the body’s stress response, which can raise blood pressure, while noise, bright lights and uncertainty in an emergency department can further increase stress.

However, the study cannot determine what exactly produced the effect — virtual reality, music or the combination of the two.

The authors emphasize that VR and music were used only as an adjunct to medication and did not replace it.

According to the researchers, the findings so far primarily suggest that this approach could be used as a simple and inexpensive way to help patients relax and slightly accelerate the reduction of blood pressure during the early stages of treatment.

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