When Andrew Feldman works with a young surgeon, one of the first things he asks is: "Are you any good at video games?" Feldman, a Manhattan orthopedic surgeon, said video game players are naturally adept at using the basic surgical tools of the 21st century -- a remote-control joystick and a video monitor.
"Surgery is becoming one big video game and they've got the skills," said Feldman, director of sports medicine at Saint Vincent's Hospital. "All those parents who tell their kids to get away from the Nintendo may want to think twice." As surgery becomes increasingly computerized, doctors are being forced to develop skills long associated with video and computer games like Tomb Raider, Flight Simulator and Super Smash Brothers. Those skills include good hand-eye coordination, fast reflexes and an ability to solve problems in a virtual-reality environment, said Wiley Nifong, a cardiac surgeon who teaches surgical robotics at the East Carolina School of Medicine in Greenville, North Carolina.
"We've coined a term for it -- video dexterity," said Nifong, 39, who has taught 115 doctors how to use surgical robots.
"The younger the student, the better they seem to do on the robot." Most new surgeries use minimally invasive techniques where fiber-optic cameras and remote-controlled instruments are inserted through small keyholes in a patient's body. In such operations, surgeons don't view their work directly through an open incision. Most of the time, their eyes are focused on video monitors with images of a patient's internal anatomy while their hands work the controls.
Minimally invasive surgical techniques are growing in popularity because they result in fewer infections and seldom require blood transfusions, doctors said. Smaller incisions also take less time to heal.
"They cut recovery times for patients by a third to a half," said Dennis Fowler, director of Minimal Access Surgery at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan.
Remote-controlled robots make fewer mistakes because they never experience the hand tremors even seasoned surgeons sometimes get, Fowler said.
Technology is redefining surgery and the traditional role surgeons play in the operating room, researchers said.
"The funny thing about this technology is that a lot of smart people can't do it and lot of not-so-smart people are great at it," said Robert Howe, an engineering professor who teaches robotics at Harvard University.
When Nifong teaches older surgeons how to operate a surgical robot, it often takes them hours, if not days, to master simple maneuvers such as tying sutures, he said.
When he brings in a class of 12 or 13-year-olds to practice on the machine, he finds that many of them are able to tie serviceable surgical knots within 15 minutes of taking the controls.
"It's no big deal to the kids," he said. "They've basically been doing this kind of thing all their lives on games and computers." The mid-career surgeons who are adept at the technology often have a long history with high-tech gadgets and video games.
"Back in the '80s I really thought that Pac-Man was a neat game," said New-York Presbyterian's Fowler, 53.
Dr Michael Argenziano, a 34-year-old surgeon at New York Presbyterian, has a house full of computers, digital cameras and video games, but his favorite gadget is da Vinci, a US$980,000 robot that sits in a corner of the hospital's operating suite, he said.
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