Can Virtual Reality Prevent ICU Delirium? NIH Award Supports Houston Methodist Study

Houston Methodist critical care specialist Dr. Hina Faisal has received a National Institutes of Health career development award to investigate whether immersive virtual reality therapy can help prevent ICU delirium — a common and potentially devastating complication among older adults recovering from surgery.

Dr. Faisal’s five-year project, supported by the National Institute on Aging through a K76 Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Career Development Award, will evaluate a virtual reality–based cognitive stimulation program designed to maintain attention and reduce delirium risk in vulnerable surgical patients.

The randomized pilot trial will focus on older adults with cognitive impairment, a population particularly susceptible to postoperative confusion and functional decline.

“As the U.S. population ages, scalable approaches to delirium prevention are increasingly urgent,” Dr. Faisal said. “By leveraging immersive technology to deliver personalized cognitive stimulation, we hope virtual reality–based therapies could ultimately transform geriatric critical care and improve recovery trajectories for older surgical patients.”

Delirium, characterized by sudden confusion, inattention and altered awareness, affects as many as 87% of older patients undergoing major medical procedures and is associated with prolonged hospitalization, long-term cognitive decline and increased mortality.

“Despite evidence showing that many cases of ICU delirium are preventable, traditional nonpharmacologic interventions such as cognitive stimulation are difficult to deliver consistently in busy hospital settings due to limited staff resources and challenges maintaining patient engagement,” Dr. Faisal explained.

Dr. Faisal’s study aims to address those barriers by integrating cognitive stimulation games into an immersive virtual reality platform. Early feasibility testing conducted by her team in healthy older adults and low-risk geriatric patients demonstrated the approach was safe, acceptable and engaging, supporting expansion to higher-risk ICU populations.

The upcoming trial will examine not only feasibility and safety but also effects on sustained attention and delirium incidence. The work reflects Houston Methodist’s growing focus on technology-enabled recovery strategies aimed at improving outcomes for older adults across the perioperative and critical care continuum.

The project builds on Dr. Faisal’s broader research portfolio exploring cognitive stimulation as a delirium prevention strategy.

In a narrative review published in Behavioral Sciences, Dr. Faisal and colleagues highlighted delirium as a highly prevalent neuropsychiatric complication affecting critically ill patients and noted growing interest in digital and VR-based cognitive interventions to enhance engagement and overcome implementation challenges in hospital environments.

Board-certified in anesthesiology and critical care, Dr. Faisal joined Houston Methodist in 2019 as a faculty member in the Department of Surgery, where her clinical work focuses on surgical critical care alongside resident education and training initiatives.