Video games help surgeons hone their skills

May 24 2006

According to a new study it is suggested that prior to carrying out surgery, surgeons might benefit from playing video games.

The research has revealed that surgeons who warmed up by playing video games for 20 minutes immediately prior to performing surgical drills were faster and made fewer errors than those who did not.

Dr. James Rosser, lead investigator on the study involved 303 surgeons participating in a medical training course that included video games.

The course was focused on laparoscopic surgical procedures which use a tiny video camera and long, slender instruments inserted through small incisions.

The doctors were measured on their performance of the "cobra rope" drill, a standard laparoscopic training exercise used to teach how to sew up an internal wound.

The researchers found that surgeons who played video games immediately before the drill completed it an average of 11 seconds faster than those who did not.

Any errors committed during the training lengthened the time it took to complete the task indicating that faster finishers made fewer mistakes.

The results support findings from a small study conducted by Rosser in 2003, which showed that doctors who grew up playing video games tended to be more efficient and less error-prone in laparoscopic training drills.

That earlier study suggested that playing video games sharpened eye-hand coordination, reaction time and visual skills.

Laparoscopic surgical procedures can be used on organs such as the gall bladder, uterus or the colon.

Rosser who is the director of the Advanced Medical Technology Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in New York City, compares performing laparoscopic surgery to "trying to tie your shoe laces with three-foot-long chopsticks while watching on a TV screen."

Fifty one year-old surgeon Rosser says he has been playing video games since the 1970s, and he developed the Top Gun Laparoscopic Surgery Skill and Suturing Program used in the study.

He has collected data on 5,000 doctors who have used the training program since its 1991 debut and his aim is to clamp down on medical errors by giving surgeons training tools similar to flight simulators used by pilots.

As Rosser says surgeons can't practice on patients.

Medical errors are estimated to contribute to 100,000 deaths each year in the United States.

The study was conducted by Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City in conjunction with the National Institute on Media and the Family.