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Arthroscopic surgery skills may improve for residents who train on a virtual simulator
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Significant improvements in arthroscopic knee and shoulder surgery skills were seen in orthopedic residents who trained on a virtual arthroscopic simulator, according to published study.
“Our study confirmed our hypothesis that simulator training would improve resident performance on the arthroscopy tasks,” Theodore B. Shybut, MD, told Healio.com/Orthopedics. “Trends in our data suggested junior residents made greater improvements on knee tasks and senior residents made greater improvements on the shoulder. Our findings regarding knee and shoulder improvements with regard to PGY-level fit with traditional paradigms. The simulator represents a paradigm shift in surgical education, and one of the most important take-home messages from our study is that more research is needed to further develop the incorporation of simulators into orthopedic training.”
There were 18 orthopedic surgery residents who performed diagnostic knee and shoulder tasks on the ArthroS simulator. The residents completed training modules and then repeated the diagnostic tasks on the simulator. Investigators calculated correlation coefficients for improvements in the mean composite score. This was based on the Imperil Global Arthroscopy Rating Scale as function of PGY.
Results showed the mean improvement in the composite score for the knee simulator was 11.2 points and was 14.9 points for the shoulder stimulator. All resident groups showed improvement when broken down by PGY. Junior-level residents saw the greatest improvements in the knee simulator and senior-level residents saw greater improvements in the shoulder simulator.
According to researchers, the analysis of variance for the score improvement variable among PGY groups yielded an f value of 1.640 and 0.2292 for the knee simulator data and shoulder simulator data, respectively. The correlation coefficient for the knee score improvement and shoulder score improvement was -0.866 and 0.887, respectively – by Monica Jaramillo
Disclosures: The study was supported by a grant from the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery. Please see the full study for a list of all other authors’ relevant financial disclosures.
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