Using Low-Cost Virtual Reality Simulation to Build Surgical Capacity for Cervical Cancer Treatment

Worldwide, more than 80% of people diagnosed with cancer will require surgery during their disease course, but only 5% to 20% of low- and middle-income countries have access to safe, affordable, and timely surgery. Developing surgical oncology skills requires significant time and mentoring. Virtual reality (VR) simulators can reduce the time required to master surgical procedures but are prohibitively expensive. We sought to determine whether a VR simulator using low-cost computer gaming equipment could train novice surgeons in Africa to perform a virtual radical abdominal (open) hysterectomy (RAH).

Our RAH VR simulator used the Oculus Rift (Oculus VR, Menlo Park, CA), a VR headset with hand controllers that costs less than $1,500. Surgical novices learned to perform five key steps of a virtual RAH. We measured and identified predictors of movement and time efficiency for the simulation.

Ten novice surgeons in Lusaka, Zambia, enrolled in the study. Movement and time efficiency greatly improved over time. Independent predictors of movement efficiency were number of simulations, surgical experience, and time since college graduation. Independent predictors of time efficiency were number of simulations, surgical experience, days between simulation sessions, age, sex, and an interaction between number of simulations and surgical experience.

Low-cost VR may be an effective tool to help surgical novices learn complex surgical oncology procedures. If learning to perform VR surgical procedures with low-cost hardware leads to faster mastery of surgical procedures in the operating room, low-cost VR may represent one of the solutions to increasing access to surgical cancer care globally.