Hannah Harris1, Kristen Quinn, MD2, Grace Chen1, Kayla Diaz1, Alan Harzman, MD1, Xiaodong (phoenix) Chen, PhD1, Syed Husain, MD1. 1Ohio State University, 2Medical University of South Carolina
Introduction: This is the first phase of a project sponsored by a SAGES robotic surgery grant. While there has been increased adoption of the robotic platform in general surgery over the last few years, there is no consensus on how the introduction of this new modality impacts resident education. Our previous work has indicated that exposure to the robotic platform may interfere with laparoscopic skill acquisition in naïve operators (medical students).
We hypothesized that similar effects would be identified in surgical residents.
Methods and Procedures: Twelve general surgery interns were randomized into two groups. Group 1 performed five repetitions of the peg-transfer task using the robot first followed by performance of same tasks using the laparoscopic trainer. Group 2 performed the same tasks in reverse order. Participants were timed and errors were recorded. Transference of skill was measured by comparing the improvement in baseline performance levels between first and second attempt for each modality. Learning curves were calculated as the number of attempts required to reach best performance level (plateau) for each modality. Accuracy was calculated by the number of drops during the peg transfer tasks. A one-sided CUSUM analysis was used to evaluate the learning curves and Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test was used to compare the times to task completion between the groups.
Results: Task completion was consistently faster (p<0.05) and more accurate (13 vs. 73 drops) with the robot compared to laparoscopy. There appeared to be transference of skill between both modalities. However, a more robust improvement was noted in the baseline skill level in the group that was exposed to laparoscopy first followed by robotic tasks (25.79%) compared to the group with exposure to robotic tasks before laparoscopy (16.37%).
Conclusions: These results are consistent with our previous research in that introduction to laparoscopic technology before robot improves acquisition of skill using the robotic platform. Introduction to robotic platform before exposure to laparoscopy might result in a decreased training efficiency of students’ robotic training, as the robot-first group’s learning curve did not reach a plateau. The phase 2 of this project investigating this effect in senior residents is currently under way and will be reported separately.
Presented at the SAGES 2017 Annual Meeting in Houston, TX.
Abstract ID: 94989
Program Number: P411
Presentation Session: Poster Session (Non CME)
Presentation Type: Poster