Abstract: PD46-06
Sources of Funding: none

Introduction

Robotic surgery has recently become popular in various surgical fields. Although the high degree of instrument maneuverability in robotic surgery reduces surgeon stress and muscle fatigue, surgeons are also forced to maintain uncomfortable joint positions intraoperatively. In this study, we used an optical motion capture system to analyze the differences in the posture pattern during robotic simulator tasks between surgeons at two skill levels.

Methods

This study included 20 participants;10 were expert surgeons and 10 were novices. We selected two exercises based on a needle driving task in a da Vinci Skills Simulator (DVSS): the Suture Sponge 1 task (SP), and the Tubes task (TU). The participants&[prime] upper body motion during each simulated surgical task was captured with the commercially available optical motion tracking system._x000D_ We evaluated the automated score of the DVSS, task time (second), the joint angles/motion range (shoulder, elbow, wrist), the percentage of time when the wrist height was lower than the elbow height (PTW, %), and the height of the elbow/wrist relative to the armrest._x000D_

Results

Experts had significantly better results than novices in overall score (SP 87.9 ± 7.4 vs 62.0 ± 15.1, p = 0.001, TU 72.4 ± 13.56 vs 56.6 ± 10.9, p = 0.028), and in task time (SP 185.9 ± 22.3 vs 283.5 ± 73.8, p = 0.002, TU 209.0 ± 20.0 vs 264.5 ± 40.6, p = 0.006). Figure 1 shows the differences in the PTW, which differed significantly between groups in both task. The features of the novice are that both the elbow joint and wrist joint tend to stretch, the height of the elbow relative to the armrest was significantly higher than experts, and the height of the wrist relative to the armrest was significantly lower. With respect to motion range, in the SP, the novices were significantly larger than the experts for the elbow, wrist, right shoulder, and left shoulder. And in the TU, the novices were significantly larger than the experts for the wrist and the shoulder on the right side.

Conclusions

Optical motion capture system detected differences in the posture patterns of novice versus expert surgeons during robotic simulator tasks. There are differences between novices and experts in the positional relationship between the elbow and wrist and joint angle of the upper limb, indicating that experts may have less posture stress.

Funding

none