[Objective]
To develop a distance education system that would allow novices to acquire manual skills in Endoscopic Paranasal Sinus Surgery (ESS).
[Method]
Subjects: Eleven medical students (5th year) at Kanazawa Medical University (KMU).
Equipment: Each KMU (Uchinada, Ishikawa) and AIST (Tsukuba, Ibaraki) site had a distance education system newly developed by AIST capable of communicating over a commercial Internet connection. Each system had two virtual mirrors in which video images of a trainee and a trainer are synthesized as if they are standing side-by-side and performing the same procedure on the same patient model. With the system, the trainee can easily note differences in equipment positions and mimic the motions of the trainer very quickly.
Procedure: A trainee at AIST remotely taught subjects at KMU two surgical tasks (A: Probing of the nasofrontal duct, B: Aspiration of the maxillary sinus) three times, for 10 minutes each. Data recorded were subjective evaluations of remote training and task performance by the trainer and the trainee, mental workload with NASA-TLX, and force applied to the patient model by the trainee during tasks using a force-torque sensor attached to the model.
[Results]
(1) After performing three remote training trials, the trainer's subjective evaluation of the trainee's task performance improved significantly (Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test, p<0.05).
(2) Task completion time did not differ significantly.
(3) Size of the force vector (average and max. values during each trial) increased after remote training compared to that of the trainers (t-test, p<0.05).
[Discussion]
Surgical skills were acquired using a distance learning system. It was confirmed by the retention checking experiment conducted two months later. Time is not a good measure for the manual skills level of novices. Increase of the force applied to the patient model was actually observed in our previous experiment of gauze packing by subjects with different surgical experiences (less experienced surgeons applied greater force than either experts or novices).
[Conclusions]
Distance surgical skill training is possible using our training system that presents synthesized virtual mirror images of the trainer and the trainee.
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