[Assessment method of cognitive load and stress inducer factors of surgeons and anesthetists in the operating room]

For many years, surgeons and anesthetists have recognized that stress can be present in their daily professional practice. The goal of this study was to identify tools for assessing stress and cognitive load in the operating room.

We conducted a literature review in the PubMed database of scientific articles published on the subject without date limit using the keywords anesthesia, surgery, surgeon, cognitive workload, definition, pathophysiology, physiological measurement, objective, subjective, stress.

Nineteen articles were selected, focusing on cardiac surgery, gastrointestinal surgery, vascular surgery and urology. No publications concerning ophthalmology were found through the literature search. The means of measurement found were either subjective, such as questionnaires, or objective, such as the study of heart rate variability (HRV), reaction time, eye movements, electrical conductivity of the skin, biological markers and electroencephalogram. Of all these measurement tools, the NASA-TLX questionnaire, used in four articles, and the HRV study, used in eight articles, appear to be the most widely used and are strongly correlated with stress.

The articles reviewed use only some of the available tools for assessment of stress and cognitive load. The main objective is to improve the quality of care and the quality of life of caregivers. It would be interesting to develop other methods to identify and better characterize the risk factors that increase stress and cognitive load.