title: Validation of SINERGIA as training tool: a randomized study to test the transfer of acquired basic psychomotor skills to LapMentor.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Laparoscopic surgery is commonly used in many surgical procedures but requires a learning process to develop the necessary skills. Virtual reality simulators play an essential role within the training curricula. This paper aims to determine whether training in SINERGIA VR simulator allows novice surgeons to improve their basic psychomotor laparoscopic skills.
  
  
  METHODS
  Forty-two people participated in this study, including 28 unexperience medical students and 14 expert surgeons who developed previously more than 100 laparoscopic procedures. Medical students made a pre-training test in LapMentor II; then, they trained in SINERGIA and they finally accomplished a post-training test in LapMentor II. Experts just made one trial in LapMentor II. A statistical analysis was carried out and results of pre- and post-training tests of novices were compared with Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Pre- and post-training tests of novices were also compared with results of experts with Mann-Whitney U test.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Most metrics provided by LapMentor II and included in this study show significant differences when comparing pre- and post-training tests of novices. Analysis of pre-training test of novices and experts results show significant differences in all analyzed metrics for all studied tasks. On the other hand, LapMentor was not able to distinguish between experts and novices after training in SINERGIA for any metric in the camera manipulation task and for some metrics of the other tasks.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Training in SINERGIA VR simulator allows improvement of basic psychomotor laparoscpic skills and transferring them to another virtual simulator. Therefore, it could be used in laparoscopic surgery training programs.
authors.affiliation: Bioengineering and Health Technology Unit, Jesús Usón Minimally Invasive Surgery Centre, Cáceres, Spain. jmoyano@ccmijesususon.com
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Moyano-Cuevas
authors.forename: F M
authors.initials: FM
authors.lastname: Sánchez-Margallo
authors.forename: L F
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Sánchez-Peralta
authors.forename: J B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Pagador
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Enciso
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sánchez-González
authors.forename: E J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Gómez-Aguilera
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Usón-Gargallo
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D010535:Laparoscopy / Q000193:education*; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D014584:User-Computer Interface