medwireNews: Children with cancer may not need to be given general anesthesia to keep them still during radiotherapy if they are allowed to watch movies of their choice during treatment.
Catia Aguas, from Cliniques Universitaires Saint Luc in Brussels, Belgium, and colleagues affixed a video projector to the patient couch allowing videos to be projected into the TomoTherapy® treatment unit, which they say was “inexpensive and simple.”
Of the six children aged 1.5–6.0 years who were treated before the device was installed, 83.3% required general anesthesia, compared with 33.3% of the six who could watch videos.
There was also a benefit in terms of the time taken to complete a session, going down from an hour to 15–20 minutes since the VLADI (Video Launching Applied during Irradiation) project was initiated.
Aguas told the press: “Since we started using videos, children are a lot less anxious. Now they know that they’re going to watch a movie of their choice, they’re more relaxed and once the movie starts it’s as though they travel to another world.
“Sponge Bob, Cars and Barbie have been popular movie choices with our patients.”
The findings were presented at the 36th European Society for Radiation and Oncology (ESTRO), held in Vienna, Austria.
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