Surgeon's vigilance in the operating room

Surgeons' vigilance regarding patient condition was assessed using eye-tracking techniques during a simulated laparoscopic procedure.

Surgeons were required to perform a partial cholecystectomy in a virtual reality trainer (SurgicalSim; METI Inc, Sarasota, FL) while wearing a lightweight head-mounted eye-tracker (Locarna systems Inc, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada). Half of the patients were preprogrammed to present a mildly unstable cardiac condition during the procedure. Surgical performance (evaluated by task time, instrument trajectory, and errors), mental workload (by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index), and eye movement were recorded and compared between 13 experienced and 10 novice surgeons.

Experienced surgeons took longer to complete the task and also made more errors. The overall workload reported by surgeons was similar, but expert surgeons reported a higher level of frustration and a lower level of physical demands. Surgeon workload was greater when operating on the unstable patient than on the stable patient. Novices performed faster but focused more of their attention on the surgical task. In contrast, experts glanced more frequently at the anesthetic monitor.

This study shows the usefulness of using eye-tracking technology to measure a surgeon's vigilance during an operation. Eye-tracking observations can lead to inferences about a surgeon's behavior for patient safety. The unsatisfactory performance of expert surgeons on the VR simulator suggests that the fidelity of the virtual simulator needs to improve to enable surgeons to transfer their clinical skills. This, in turn, suggests using caution when having clinical experts as instructors to teach skills with virtual simulators.