Preliminary evaluation of the pattern cutting and the ligating loop virtual laparoscopic trainers

Methods: Fifty-five subjects with varying surgical experience were recruited at the Learning Center during the 2013 SAGES annual meeting and were divided into two groups: experts (PGY 5, surgical fellows and surgical attendings) and novices (PGY 1-4). They were asked to perform the PC or the ligating loop task on the FLS and the VBLaST^© trainers. Their performance scores for each trainer were calculated and compared.

Results: There were no significant differences between the FLS and VBLaST^© scores for either the PC or the ligating loop task. Experts’ scores were significantly higher than the scores for novices on both trainers.

Conclusion: This study showed that the subjects’ performance on the VBLaST^© trainer was similar to the FLS performance for both tasks. Both the VBLaST-PC^© and the VBLaST-LL^© tasks permitted discrimination between the novice and expert groups. Although concurrent and discriminant validity has been established, further studies to establish convergent and predictive validity are needed. Once validated as a training system for laparoscopic skills, the system is expected to overcome the current limitations of the FLS trainer.

Introduction: The Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) trainer is currently the standard for training and evaluating basic laparoscopic skills. However, its manual scoring system is time-consuming and subjective. The Virtual Basic Laparoscopic Skill Trainer (VBLaST^©) is the virtual version of the FLS trainer which allows automatic and real time assessment of skill performance, as well as force feedback. In this study, the VBLaST^© pattern cutting (VBLaST-PC^©) and ligating loop (VBLaST-LL^©) tasks were evaluated as part of a validation study. We hypothesized that performance would be similar on the FLS and VBLaST^© trainers, and that subjects with more experience would perform better than those with less experience on both trainers.