Tu1040 VIDEO GAME EXPERIENCE IS POSITIVELY CORRELATED WITH FASTER IMPROVEMENT ON ENDOSCOPY HANDLING SKILLS

Abstract

The development of strong hand-eye coordination and psychomotor skills are crucial in endoscopy. Given the limited hours and procedural opportunities for endoscopy trainees, it is important to recognize factors that may aid or enhance in the acquisition of psychomotor skills. A recent study showed that video game training improved trainee performance in advanced virtual reality endoscopic simulators. In addition, video gaming experience has been linked to higher baseline laparoscopic skills. We sought to explore the effects of video gaming experience on endoscopic skills. We hypothesize that video game experience is positively correlated with baseline endoscope handling skills. We recruited first year gastroenterology trainees to participate in a six-week simulator-based training program from October to November 2019. We provided all trainees a previously validated simulator2 to practice tip control and scope handling by hitting 28 target points throughout the simulator. We instructed trainees to complete their practice runs as quickly as possible (expert endoscopist completion rate from previous study=mean 75 seconds (95%CI, 60-100s) following specified scope handling criteria. We abstracted participant demographics (age, sex, hand length, and hand span) and whether they had significant experience in video gaming, sports, and musical instruments. Our primary outcome was the number of runs needed before being able to consistently complete a trial run under 100 seconds. Our secondary outcome was the minimum completion time or the fastest time it took a trainee to complete one trial run. We performed descriptive statistics. We received exempt status from the local IRB. We enrolled 28 first-year gastroenterology trainees. We excluded one trainee who did not meet competency or finish the program in the analysis. A detailed list of the participant demographics is shown in Table. The gaming group reached the outer limit of 95%CI of expert-level competency (100-second completion rate) at a significantly faster rate than the non-gaming group (19.6±19.6 trial runs vs 45.5±23.2 trial runs, p=0.0044) (Figure). On average, those in the gaming group had a faster minimum completion time for one trial run, although the difference was not statistically significant (48±15 seconds vs 52±12 seconds, p=0.21). There were no significant differences for the age, hand length, and hand span between the trainees with significant gaming experience (n=14) and trainees without significant gaming experience (n=13). Both groups had similar athletic and musical experience. Video game experience is positively correlated with the faster acquisition of scope handling skills. We show that a cohort of fellows with previous video-gaming experience are able to acquire competency at twice the rate of their peers without video-gaming experience.FigureOn average, the gaming group took 19.6+19.6 trial runs to achieve competency and the non-gaming group took 45.5+23.24 runs. The difference between the two is statistically significant (p=0.0044).View Large Image Figure ViewerDownload Hi-res image Download (PPT)