Introduction of Distractions in Immersive Virtual Reality Laparoscopic Surgery Training – a Pilot Study

Abstract

Reducing human errors by surgeons is of great importance to patient safety. The main drawback of current VR laparoscopic surgery training is that it only focuses on improving the proficiency of basic surgical skills while lacking the true representation of the busy and chaotic OR surroundings. Multiple distractions were introduced into this study to explore the influence on the laparoscopic surgery training process. A VR headset displayed a video of a laparoscopy procedure recorded by a 360° camera in a real OR, which contains various distractions occurring during the surgery. Ten surgical trainees performed a standardized training task in the virtual OR under both non-distractive and distractive conditions. Questionnaires, videos and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. The results showed that the introduction of distractions significantly reduced participants' task performance (p<0.001) and increased their mental workload (p=0.001). Participants also showed different degrees of sensitivity to various distractions. In addition, most participants raised the need for system personalization. This VR-based immersive virtual OR demonstrated its potential to enhance surgeons' ability to deal with distractions in laparoscopic training. Future work will focus on improving the personalization and interactivity of the system, thereby increasing the training efficiency.Keywords: Immersive virtual reality; Surgical training; Distractions; Human error; Cognitive Workload