"The Virtual Surgeon"
Embargo date: 5:00 p.m., EST, 26 June 2000
IEEE Spectrum, July 2000
Surgical simulators promise better-trained surgeons
New York, NY--The young surgeon takes one last look at the medical charts, as she prepares to remove the elderly patient's diseased gallbladder. This is a tricky case--and it's also the surgeon's first solo operation. Yet she knows just what lies ahead. Thanks to a virtual reality training simulator at her hospital, she's already "performed" this operation hundreds of times.
Sophisticated computer simulators that mimic the look and feel of operating room procedures are now making inroads into medical education, as Daniel Sorid and Samuel K. Moore report in the July issue of IEEE Spectrum.
Taking a cue from jet pilots, who spend long hours on the ground honing their flight skills in cockpit simulators, surgeons are now using high-tech virtual reality trainers to practice suturing wounds, cutting tissue, injecting drugs, inserting catheters, and the like. The ultimate goal is to replace existing but crude training methods, like peeling grapes to improve dexterity or oprating on cadavers and anesthetized animals to learn how to do surgery. By allowing the surgeon to practice in a flexible, risk-free setting, computer simulators promise to improve medical care and decrease physician error.
In the future, designers of the virtual reality systems hope to simulate more complex procedures involving multiple organs in an even more realistic manner. And the sharing of virtual training programs via the Internet should greatly speed the adoption of new and improved surgical techniques.
Contact: Samuel K. Moore, 212-419-7921, [email protected]
For faxed copies of the complete article or to arrange an interview, contact: Nancy T. Hantman, 212-419-7561, [email protected]
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