Dr. Sanjay Gupta

If somebody comes into the emergency room with a hip fracture, which is a really common problem, especially as people get older, they almost assuredly would get opioids.

Now, in many ERs around the country, they're giving nerve blocks.

So it takes about 10 minutes, and they're essentially numbing up the area around the hip and giving this nerve block.

helps with pain immediately.

Pain scores drop to zero, but also it obviates the need or prevents the need for opioids going into the future.

They don't need opioids after that.

They've gotten rid of that acute pain syndrome.

When I was in this emergency room in Brooklyn,

Maimonides, which is this really cool place, by the way, it's level one trauma center, super diverse.

They speak 120 languages there and they are championing what they refer to as opioid optimized ERs, which is not to say opioid free because opioids can still play a role, but they will use opioids as a last resort instead of a first resort.

But they were using virtual reality.

How does that help with pain?

There was a 76-year-old woman who came in with terrible knee pain, bad enough to take her to an emergency room in the middle of the day, which, you know, that's a big ask of somebody, right?

It's your whole day.

And they put on virtual reality goggles, 20 minutes, took her to a nice Indonesian beach somewhere, and her pain scores dropped from about an eight to a three.

How does it work?

What's your theory?

People often say it's distraction.

I think it's probably some component of distraction from the pain.

But I think it's also leaning into this idea that we do truly have this integrated system.