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. 2012 Apr;26(4):1128-34.
doi: 10.1007/s00464-011-2011-8. Epub 2011 Nov 2.

Effect of haptic feedback in laparoscopic surgery skill acquisition

M Zhou  1 , S Tse, A Derevianko, D B Jones, S D Schwaitzberg, C G L Cao
Affiliations

Effect of haptic feedback in laparoscopic surgery skill acquisition

M Zhou et al. Surg Endosc. 2012 Apr.

Abstract

Background: The benefits of haptic feedback in laparoscopic surgery training simulators is a topic of debate in the literature. It is hypothesized that novice surgeons may not benefit from the haptic information, especially during the initial phase of learning a new task. Therefore, provision of haptic feedback to novice trainees in the early stage of training may be distracting and detrimental to learning. A controlled experiment was conducted to examine the effect of haptic feedback on the learning curve of a complex laparoscopic suturing and knot-tying task.

Methods: The ProMIS and the MIST-VR surgical simulators were used to represent conditions with and without haptic feedback, respectively. A total of 20 novice subjects (10 per simulator) were trained to perform suturing and knot-tying and practiced the tasks in 18 sessions of 1 h each.

Results: At the end of the 3-week training period, the subjects performed equally fast but more consistently with haptics (ProMIS) than without haptics (MIST-VR). The subjects showed a slightly higher learning rate and reached the first plateau of the learning curve earlier with haptic feedback.

Conclusion: In general, learning with haptic feedback was significantly better than learning without it for a laparoscopic suturing and knot-tying task, but only during the first 5 h of training. Haptic feedback may not be warranted in laparoscopic surgical trainers. The benefits of a shorter time to the first performance plateau and more consistent initial performance should be balanced with the cost of implementing haptic feedback in surgical simulators.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Laparoscopic Surgical Simulators: ProMIS (left) and MIST-VR (right).
Figure 2
Figure 2
The average time to task completion in each group per session. Error bars represent standard error.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The average time to task completion in percentage in each group.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The average time to task completion in each group for the first 182 knots.
Figure 5
Figure 5
The average time to ask completion in each group for the best trial of the session. Error bars represent standard error.
Figure 6
Figure 6
The variance in time to task completion in each group per session.
Figure 7
Figure 7
The between subjects variance in time to task completion in each group for the first 182 knots.
Figure 8
Figure 8
The learning curves of suturing and knot-tying phases. Error bars represent standard errors.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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