A Serious Game for Thrombosis Prophylaxis – Only for the Healthy?

The rates of thrombosis without any prophylaxis range from 40% to 50% after orthopedic surgery like hip or knee replacement. Besides pharmacological measures, the muscle-vein-pump (MVP) is a typical exercise that is recommended for thrombosis prophylaxis. However, this exercise can be mundane and boring, which will compromise adherence to the rehabilitation program. Serious Games for Health have been suggested to motivate exercise training in rehabilitation and prevention. This paper describes a serious game for thrombosis prophylaxis. 41 participants volunteered in our user study and tested either an application counting the repetitions or a serious game controlled through MVP repetitions. All participants were patients after a hip or knee replacement surgery of a rehabilitation hospital. We evaluated the effect of application type on usage, i.e., duration, repetitions, and repetitions per minute. Additionally, we applied different questionnaires, e.g., System Usability Scale, Technology Acceptance Model, Intrinsic Motivation Inventory among others.