Simulation nowadays plays a key role in surgeon training. Virtual reality provides a much more realistic learning environment and allows for trial-and-error learning without any undesired consequences for patients.

Along these lines the researcher Dr Sofia Bayona has been carrying out important work under the FP7 program Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship during her stay at the Imperial College London, focusing on progress in validation of the virtual reality arthroscopy simulator insightArthroVR.

During this research experiments were carried out with both the knee- and shoulder-arthroscopy simulator. With the knee arthroscopy simulator 86.4% of the participants thought that the simulator gave a realistic vision of actual arthroscopy and 91.3% of the respondents declared their expectations to have been met.

There was an improvement in the performance of trainee surgeons in terms of task execution time, iatrogenic harm and efficiency of arthroscope movements. The simulator proved that it is capable of distinguishing between beginner, intermediate and expert surgeons in the objective indicators analyzed (time and efficiency of movements with the athroscope and probe).

The results, for both the knee- and shoulder-arthroscopy simulators, prove that insightArthroVR is capable of simulating arthroscopy with uncanny realism and can also distinguish between the subjects in terms of their experience; it is therefore valid as an educational tool. Training with the simulator has also been shown to improve efficiency of athroscope movements (a clear indicator of improvement in skills and speed).

These results were presented in the 4th Hamlyn Symposium for Medical Robotics 2011 and serve as further evidence of the growing interest in bringing virtual training practices into surgeons’ curricula, with the aim of improving their training and, in the last analysis, ensuring patient safety. The Imperial College is now determined to continue this line of research and bring out more publications on the subject; hence its upcoming presentations at the BOA/IOA Combined Meeting 2011 British Orthopaedic Association/Irish Orthopaedic Association, Dublin, Ireland, 13-16 Sep 2011 and the 23rd Congress of the European Society for Surgery of the Shoulder and the Elbow (SECEC-ESSSE), Lyon, France, 14-17 Sep 2011.