Virtual reality (VR) training might help stroke survivors regain their arm movement, a new evidence review says.

The results indicate that VR could be a promising tool to boost rehab efforts, mainly by increasing the amount of therapy patients receive, researchers said.

"Spending more time in therapy is known to improve outcomes after stroke," lead researcher Kate Laver, a professor in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders University in the U.K., said in a news release. "Virtual reality can offer a fairly inexpensive and engaging way to increase the amount of therapy without a clinician’s supervision."

For the evidence review, researchers pooled data from 190 clinical trials involving nearly 7,200 people. This update adds 119 new studies conducted since a previous review in 2017.

Many of the trials were small and used basic or low-cost VR tech, such as off-the-shelf gaming systems, researchers said.

The review concluded that VR therapy slightly benefited arm function and could be helpful in restoring balance and reducing limitations on people’s activity.

However, the review found little evidence that VR therapy could improve walking speed or a person’s overall quality of life.

Most current VR programs miss an opportunity by focusing on movement training, rather than helping people regain functional abilities like dressing or cooking, researchers said.

“This technology has the potential to simulate real-life environments, such as shopping in a supermarket or crossing a street, which allows clinicians to trial tasks that are unsafe to practice in the real world,” Lavar said.

“There’s a real opportunity for researchers to go further and develop more sophisticated, function-focused therapies,” she added.

A very small number of patients reported side effects like pain, headaches or dizziness, indicating that VR therapy is by and large safe for stroke survivors, researchers said.

The new paper was published June 20 and appears in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.