• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.33-40
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to review the effect of previous research data with virtual reality-based Physical Activity Therapy Programs(PATPs) in adult on the physical fitness factors. Research articles were retrieved from 2008 to 2021 with the Research Information Sharing Service(RISS) and Pubmed database. The main search terms were 'care', 'therapy', 'healing', 'exercise' or 'physical activity', and 'virtual reality'. The criteria for selecting articles of this study were the originality, duplication, Randomized controlled trial(RCT) experiment and subject. Finally, 18 papers were selected among 318 articles, which were excluded if any of the criteria was not satisfied. Most of papers(15) were conducted in the last 5 years, because of the high interest due to the development of virtual reality implementation technology and COVID-19 pandemic. The participants were mainly patients(8), and the types of diseases were stroke(2). The physical fitness factors were mostly balance ability(7), muscle strength(7), and range of motion(6). All the physical fitness factors were significantly improved after PATPs. However, 11 studies were conducted for less than 4 weeks, including 6 studies were performed a bout of acute exercise. Also, 14 studies did not clearly present the intensity of PATPs. In addition, there were 9 studies, that simply applied games without specialized programs. In conclusion, it seems that virtual reality-based PATPs have a positive effect on physical fitness factors. However, VR-based PATPs should be specialized and developed in order to verify their effectiveness for the further research.