Background: This research goes on the line of studies focused on the evaluation of the effect of the use of virtual reality on the state of anxiety in patients; specifically, during the preoperative care. Anxiety is a problem that patients manifest before entering a surgical procedure, either due to the risk of the surgery to which they will be subjected, due to lack of information, or due to the predisposition of their character to anxiety (trait anxiety).A state of high anxiety can put surgery at risk, affecting the patient's vital signs, leading the anesthesiologist to increase the dose of anesthesia or, in extreme cases, forcing to reschedule the procedure. Evaluating preoperative anxiety is one of the functions of the surgical nursing staff, as well as proposing and evaluating alternatives in order to reduce the state anxiety of patients. Objective: To evaluate the effect of virtual reality on state anxiety in patients during preoperative care. Method: A descriptive, cross-sectional and prospective research was carried out on a sample of 19 patients scheduled for different types of surgeries. In order to measure the level of anxiety before and after the use of virtual reality lenses, an instrument was applied during preoperative care. Vital signs, state anxiety and self-perception anxiety were assessed. For measuring the state anxiety level, a modified version of the Spielberger’ State-Trait Anxiety Inventory was used. Statistical analysis was performed with parametric and non-parametric hypothesis tests for related samples, as appropriate. Results: Occurrence of statistically significant changes in vital signs, state anxiety and self-perception of anxiety before and after the use of virtual reality was corroborated (p <0.05).This suggests the reduction of general anxiety on patients during preoperative care while using virtual reality lenses. Results obtained are compatible with most part of the antecedent literature on the subject, which states that virtual reality is a technique has shown favorable results for the treatment of anxiety in different surgical or clinical contexts. Conclusions: The use of virtual reality lenses favorably affected the reduction of state anxiety in the patients analyzed during the perioperative care. This suggests that virtual reality technique has great clinical potential.
