Abstract:

Knee- Arthroscopy is a complex surgical ability. It is a combination of factors like anatomical knowledge, hand-eye coordination, three-dimensional mental activity and operating experience. Surgeons as well as students were not able to train knee arthroscopy before. Parts of these abilities were trained by playing video games. Former studies indicated a correlation between a better performance in virtual reality (VR) laparoscopy simulation and video game experience. The aim of this study is to show that experienced video gamer perform better in a virtual arthroscopy simulation.
164 medical students did an arthroscopy of a longitudinal meniscus tear on a VR knee arthroscopy simulator (the insight Arthro VR ® GMV, Madrid, Spain). The students completed a questionnaire asking for their game experience: none (n= 123), monthly (n=20) weekly (n=17) daily (n=6) before they did the arthroscopy. The simulator assessed 4 different parameters: time, distance moved and roughness both for probe and camera and a global score (combination of all metrics).
Students with game experience (n=43) performed significantly (p<= 0,05) better than not experienced students (n=123). There is a tendency that the performances get better with more game experience.
Gamer performed better in a VR knee arthroscopy than not gamer. These result correlates to the laparoscopic simulator training. There is a tendency of achieving a better performance in VR arthroscopy simulation due to a higher frequency of playing games. Extensive training on the simulator improves the abilities of non-gamers with respect to their arthroscopy skills. We will evaluate these dates in the future.

Keywords:

knee ask, simulation, teaching, students.