Systems and technologies for objective evaluation of technical skills in laparoscopic surgery

Abstract

Minimally invasive surgery is a highly demanding surgical approach regarding technical requirements for the surgeon, who must be trained in order to perform a safe surgical intervention. Traditional surgical education in minimally invasive surgery is commonly based on subjective criteria to quantify and evaluate surgical abilities, which could be potentially unsafe for the patient. Authors, surgeons and associations are increasingly demanding the development of more objective assessment tools that can accredit surgeons as technically competent. This paper describes the state of the art in objective assessment methods of surgical skills. It gives an overview on assessment systems based on structured checklists and rating scales, surgical simulators, and instrument motion analysis. As a future work, an objective and automatic assessment method of surgical skills should be standardized as a means towards proficiency-based curricula for training in laparoscopic surgery and its certification.

Key words::

• Laparoscopic surgery
• objective evaluation
• motion analysis
• surgical simulators
• psychomotor skills

Acknowledgements

This study was supported in part by the Plan Regional de Investigación, Consejería de Empleo, Empresa e Innovación, Gobierno de Extremadura and the European Social Found (PRE08057).

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.