Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 21, 2026
Simulator Training for Endovascular Neurosurgery
Published on: May 6, 2020
Evaluation of a surgical simulator as used by students with different experience levels
Eduardo Flores-Villalba1, José Antonio Díaz-Elizondo, Adolfo Leyva-Alvizo
1Centro de Habilidades de la Escuela de Medicina y Ciencias de la Salud, ITESM, Campus Monterrey, NL, Mexico. eduardofloresv@gmail.com
Background:
Historically, the operating room has been the training setting for both surgeons and students. Nowadays, an alternative is represented by surgical simulators. In the same way a not-very-well-built mirror cannot reflect trustworthy images (distortion), a not well-built, calibrated or programmed simulator will be unable to reflect the training level of the operator. Our aim is to indirectly evaluate the Surgical SIM® simulator.
Methods:
Twelve surgical residents were classified according to novices, intermediates and experts, and 15 tasks were applied with three dimensions of evaluation in each using the Surgical SIM® simulator. Pearson's correlation test was used to establish validity.
Results:
In general, from the three dimensions evaluated, results showed a statistically significant difference for time (p = 0.001), trajectory (p = 0.01) and errors (p = 0.001).
Conclusions:
Effectiveness of Surgical SIM® was indirectly demonstrated.
