Miramare Spa Hotel offers a new feature in the form of rehabilitation using virtual reality

Exercising in a virtual environment opens up new possibilities for spa patients. It can significantly help in the treatment of many diagnoses, such as post-traumatic and post-surgical conditions of the limbs, degenerative diseases of the musculoskeletal system, functional mobility disorders, hemiparesis after a stroke, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, oncological diseases or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.

Virtual reality also holds great promise for wheelchair rehabilitation. In fact, virtual reality training has been shown to reduce spastic pain and improve the mental state of patients. In fact, virtual reality can essentially trick the brain into increasing the amount of signals sent to the limbs, thus promoting the restoration of lost function through neuroplastic changes.

An artificial virtual environment created using computer graphics is an illusion of the real world in which the patient is able to interact, while using his or her senses to perceive the virtual world as real. This uses mirror neurons, where the brain engages with the simulated movement in the virtual reality in exactly the same way as if the person were performing the movement themselves.

Patients then make huge strides, for example their muscles get stronger. This opens up new hope for the handicapped person who is learning to walk again. It helps, for example, to activate muscles and thus reciprocally relieve spastic pain.

"Virtual reality is an attractive innovation in addressing many areas of rehabilitation care, and its use in our spa hotels made sense to us from the beginning. Because we want to provide care at the highest level," said Aleš Příhoda, head of rehabilitation care and development of therapeutic methods at the Royal Spa chain.

"The introduction of virtual reality therapy brings not only an expansion of the range of services and improvement of rehabilitation care for our clients, but also a certain degree of diversification of everyday work for our medical staff. Modern technologies offer many new possibilities of interaction between the client and the therapist, but also a very important feedback from the therapy, which is recorded, analyzed and evaluated thanks to these technologies," added Příhoda.

During virtual rehabilitation, the patient is fitted with special glasses that transport him into a virtual world, where he performs various motor actions. With the ability to stream the patient's image to a tablet, the physiotherapist can effectively monitor, assist and direct the patient during therapy.

Each of the more than 30 apps, which can be rotated to suit individual patient needs, is programmed so that the patient knows immediately what to do. Connecting to a central system allows healthcare professionals to instantly diagnose, measure and evaluate outcomes. This simplifies monitoring and analyzing patient progress and helps determine the ideal rehabilitation program to follow. In the long term, it then allows for a greater volume of care to be provided.

"In everything we strive to do, the person, their needs and their quality of life come first and we want to continually improve that. Virtual reality in our delivery allows doctors to quickly access all relevant data, saving them time and costs," explains Konstantin Novikov, founder of VR Medical.

The main advantage of using virtual reality during rehabilitation is the natural motivation of patients and the stimulation to push their personal boundaries. Immersion in an artificial world is an experience for patients of all ages. It allows them to break free from their limitations and overcome obstacles that they may perceive as insurmountable in the real world.

Rehabilitation is thus taken to the next level by combining human touch and modern technology, which promotes neuroplasticity and motor function recovery after injury, surgery or disease. It targets restoration of joint range of motion, muscle strength, physical fitness and trains gross and fine motor skills.

The therapy session is 20 minutes in length in a group setting, and patient outcomes are measured and then compared during the session, providing a high motivational effect.

For rehabilitation using virtual reality, spa clients pay nothing extra, the procedure is provided as part of the comprehensive spa care services.

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