the effect of virtual reality and educational video on anxiety of cardiac angiography candidates: a randomized clinical trial

Background: angiography is one of the prominent methods for diagnosis and treatment of coronary heart disease. some patients who are candidates for angiography experience great anxiety.aim: the present study was conducted with aim to compare the effect of virtual reality (distraction) and educational video on patients’ anxiety before coronary angiography.method: this randomized clinical trial study was conducted on patients who were candidates for coronary angiography in heart center of razi hospital in birjand city of iran, from april to october 2023. by permuted block randomization, 90 patients were randomly divided into two intervention groups and one control group. before the angiography, the intervention groups were once exposed to virtual reality vr (distraction) and educational video. data were collected before and after the intervention.results: there was no significant difference among the three groups in the gender distribution (p=0.897) and mean age (p=0.205). the distraction group experienced lower levels of overt and covert anxiety compared to the control group (p<0.001) and educational video group (p=0.007). in addition, the anxiety score of the participants in the distraction group significantly decreased after the intervention compared to before the intervention (p<0.001).implications for practice: the implementation of vr as a distraction approach had an effect on reducing preoperative anxiety in angiography candidate patients. vr can be used as a non-pharmacological approach in angiography departments to reduce patients’ anxiety.