Live Surgery: Essential Surgical Education or Putting Patients at Risk?

Abstract

Surgical and anatomical demonstrations have been fundamental to medical education since the times of John Hunter and William Cheselden, when groups of students and junior surgeons learnt by observing the masters of their time. With the advent of minimally invasive surgery it has become possible to obtain as good a view of an individual procedure as the primary surgeon him or herself. With technological advances in telemedicine and the increasing bandwidth offered by internet links, surgical procedures can be easily observed remotely in high quality with no concern for distance.