Shiv, are you listening? ;-)
Udhay
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=63580
Playing Video Games May Contribute To Keyhole Surgery Skills
Article Date: 21 Feb 2007 - 8:00 PST
A small US study suggests that surgeons who played video games have
better keyhole surgery skills than those that did not.
The study was performed by US scientists at Beth Israel Medical
Centre in New York and is published in this month's issue of the
Archives of Surgery.
The researchers did the study because although anecdotal observations
suggest that young surgeons who played video games were better at
performing laparoscopies (keyhole surgery) than those who do not,
this had not been empirically investigated.
Laparoscopy is a type of surgery where the surgeon has to handle
small instruments and go into the patient's body via a small hole or
incision, hence the term "keyhole surgery".
The surgeon does the operation using a television screen to see where
to move the instruments; her or she cannot look straight at the place
they are operating on because it is inside the body and the keyhole
is too small.
The researchers found a strong link between ability to play video
games and performing well in keyhole surgery.
The researchers studied 33 surgeons based at New York's Beth Israel
Medical Centre.
The participants had to play three different video games for up to 25
minutes to assess their current skill, and also answer questions on
their past experience of playing video games.
Their surgical skill were measured during a course that took one and
a half days to complete. On the course the participants carried out a
range of simulated laparoscopic and suturing procedures where their
completion time and error rates were measured.
The researchers also took note of the participants' level of surgical
training, number of cases of laparoscopy performed, and the years
they had been in medical practice.
They then ran a cross-sectional analysis to compare participants'
laparoscopic and suturing skills against video game experience and
video game scores.
The results showed that 9 young surgeons who had played video games
for at least 3 hours a week made 37 per cent fewer mistakes and
worked 27 per cent faster than 15 surgeons who had never played video games.
The 9 surgeons with past experience of video game playing also scored
42 per cent higher overall on the range of surgical skill tests.
Also, the correlation between video gaming skill and surgical skill
as measured by the simulation, was stronger than either the surgeon's
training or experience measured in duration.
The researchers concluded that video games could help train surgeons
who perform keyhole surgery.
In an invited critique that accompanies the same issue of the
journal, Doctor Myriam Curet re-iterates the warning that the
researchers made in their article ""indiscriminate video game play is
not a panacea," and invites the media not to distort the message in this study.
She said parents still need to keep a check on their children's video
gaming hours and the types of games they are playing.
And looking at the robustness of the article, she points out that it
has limitations such as the small sample size. She also draws
attention to the jump from the results to the conclusion. The results
showed that it was past experience of video gaming that correlated to
present level of surgical skill.
Perhaps the most useful contribution that this study makes is that it
has opened a door that invites further investigation.
One of the authors of the study, Dr Douglas Gentile did a survey in
2004 on video game playing by American teenagers and found that over
90 per cent of them are playing for an average of 9 hours a week.
Excessive game playing takes the place of physical exercise, and has
been linked to poorer performance at school and aggressive behaviour.
Dr Gentile advises that parents should not view this study as
supporting the notion that it is OK for children to play video games
for more than 1 hour a day. That will not help them get into medical
school, he said.
"The Impact of Video Games on Training Surgeons in the 21st Century."
James C. Rosser Jr; Paul J. Lynch; Laurie Cuddihy; Douglas A.
Gentile; Jonathan Klonsky; Ronald Merrell
Arch Surg. 2007;142:181-186.
Click here for Abstract.
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((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
