The surgeon inserts a device consisting of a slender tube, a system of lenses, and a tiny video camera through a small hole in the abdominal wall and observes the image on a television screen. William N. Wang, a laparoscopic-surgery fellow at Hershey, says his sessions on the MIST system when he was a resident here made him more relaxed when it came time to operate on a real patient. Residents also can practice open surgery on a simulator that makes them feel like they're actually cutting into tissue. As residents sew two pieces of virtual intestine together on the screen, they feel the punch as the needle penetrates the intestinal wall. The needle, mounted in a thimble on a robotic arm, controls its counterpart on the screen.
Residents can practice life-support techniques on an eerily lifelike simulated patient.
Its thumbs even twitch and then fall still as anesthesia begins to take effect. If I had had to start out in an actual operating room, I'd be standing around, waiting for someone else to take charge. Here, I'm comfortable doing that. Using the virtual-reality devices to supplement a resident's training can free up a busy surgeon's schedule by reducing the amount of time spent with a learner in tow. For one thing, the equipment is expensive.