gms | German Medical Science

Objective: An important part of neurosurgical training is to improve the surgical skills. Acquiring microsurgical skills follows the principle of a learning curve which can be influenced by specific exercises, feedback and training. Target of education should be to ensure a quick learning success. The study shows in which way the video-based training can influence the learning curve.

Method: Over a period of 1.5 years (2011–2012) 10 residents are evaluated in spinal surgery (18 cases each resident) by a skilled evaluator based on different evaluation criteria. The evalution criteria (exposition of important anatomy, intraoperative bleeding, effectivity of using bipolar,...) are weighted and added to single quality-score. The totality of residents is divided into 2 groups. Only one group (n=5) get the video-based training.

Results: All residents showed an individual different but explicit increase of microsurgical skills. The quality-score of the beginning point comparing to the preliminary end point of the study demonstrated a higher progression in the group with video-based training (42%) than the group without video-based training (25%). In considering all residents together the video training group displayed a steeper gradient of the microsurgical success until now. By comparing single residents the acquiring of microsurgical skills showed individually disparities. Different bias that can influence the learning success are under examination.

Conclusions: The video-based training can improve the microsurgical skills and leads to improved learning curve. A later entry of the learning curve plateau in the group with video training promotes the higher acquisition of surgical skills. Because of the positive effect we plan to apply the video-based training model to other neurosurgical subspecialities especially neurovascula and skull base surgery.