The impact of tiredness on virtual reality robotic surgical skills

Introduction
The effect of tiredness has been proved for the surgeons’ musculature performing laparoscopic or robotic procedures (physical stress). Mental stress after robotic surgery has been reported as well. It is still unclear how much the surgical skills are altered and which types of skills are more affected at the final steps of long, complex robotic surgical procedures.

Aim
To evaluate to what extent the surgeon’s skills are influenced by long procedures, using the objective assessment of different surgical skills by a virtual reality robotic simulator.

Material and methods
Fifteen surgeons were asked to perform a continuous 4 h virtual robotic surgical simulator training session. At the beginning of simulator training and at the end of each of the 4 h of training, three exercises of increasing difficulty were selected to be performed in order to assess the surgeons’ skills.

Results
There were statistically significant differences between the initial and final overall scores for all the three exercises, the final outcomes being inferior. The specific metrics for each exercise slightly improved within 1 h from the beginning and thereafter decreased to a statistically significantly inferior value.

Conclusions
The specific metrics on the virtual reality robotic surgical simulator were altered after a 4-hour console training period. Further larger and more complex studies are necessary to evaluate the translation from the simulator to real-life robotic surgery.