Approaching time is important for assessment of endoscopic surgical skills

Abstract

This study aimed to verify whether the approaching time (the time taken to reach the target point from another point, a short distance apart, during point-to-point movement in endoscopic surgery), assessed using the Hiroshima University Endoscopic Surgical Assessment Device (HUESAD), could distinguish the skill level of surgeons. Expert surgeons (who had performed more than 50 endoscopic surgeries) and novice surgeons (who had no experience in performing endoscopic surgery) were tested using the HUESAD. The approaching time, total time, and intermediate time (total time – approaching time) were measured and analyzed using the trajectory of the tip of the instrument. The approaching time and total time were significantly shorter in the expert group than in the novice group (p < 0.0001). The intermediate time did not significantly differ between the groups (p > 0.05). The approaching time, which is a component of the total time, is very mportant in the measurement of the total time to assess endoscopic surgical skills. Further, the approaching time was useful for skill assessment by the HUESAD for evaluating the skill of surgeons performing endoscopic surgery.

Key words::

• Endoscopic surgery
• objective skill assessment
• HUESAD
• point-to-point movement
• motion analysis

Acknowledgments

We thank all the surgeons and medical students for their participation. We are grateful to Prof. Makoto Kaneko for his support in the device development and discussions.

Declaration of interest: Drs. Masakazu Tokunaga, Hiroyuki Egi, Minoru Hattori, Masanori Yoshimitsu, Daisuke Sumitani, Tomohiro Kawahara, Masazumi Okajima, and Hideki Ohdan have no conflicts of interest or financial ties to disclose.