Teleconferencing surgery enhances effective communication and enriches medical education.

Medical student surgical training has traditionally occurred in the operating room (OR). Present technology allows real time communication between the OR and a remote classroom. We seek to evaluate the value of the teleconferencing (TC) environment compared with the traditional OR environment. Students enrolled in the third-year core clerkship in surgery participated in both TC and OR teaching sessions. A total of 23 sessions were conducted and observed (TC=8; OR=15). In TC sessions, students asked over 4 times as many questions (17.4+/-8.5 vs. 3.4+/-3.0; P<0.01) and faculty asked 4 times as many questions of the students (13.1+/-6.8 vs. 3.1+/-2.7; P<0.01). In TC sessions, students felt more able to ask questions (P<0.01), left with fewer unanswered questions (P<0.01), and more felt it was a good use of their time (P=0.04). These findings demonstrate that TC is a valuable modality for medical student education.

A novel laparoscopic mesh placement part task trainer.

BACKGROUND: We present a surgical simulator, developed for the training of a laparoscopic surgery and in particular for mesh placement during an inguinal herniorrhaphy. METHODS: Major technical issues related to virtual surgery training systems include virtual patient modelling, collision detection and collision response, haptic and graphic rendering, 3-D motion tracking and some special effects, such as bleeding, cauterizing and so on. Among these problems, real-time deformation modelling and collision detection are the most challenging research topics. RESULTS: In this paper, we describe novel approaches addressing the above issues, which have been successfully adopted in our bimanual hernia repair simulator. CONCLUSION: The implementations of our new collision detection and deformation appear to work well, even at haptic rates for the limited scope of mesh placement training. More sophisticated techniques are needed for full organ deformation especially for blunt dissection simulation.