Effectiveness of immersive virtual reality in orthognathic surgical education: A randomized controlled trial

To evaluate the efficacy of an iVR surgical training system for orthognathic surgery training in medical students.

This study comprised 20 fifth year medical students who were randomly assigned to the VR or traditional group for orthognathic surgical education. All participants were initially provided a lecture on orthognathic surgery. The VR group then received 10 educational sessions using the self-developed iVR training system, whereas the traditional group received 10 sessions using technical manuals and annotated operation videos. These sessions were 40-min long in both the groups. Before the evaluation, the traditional group completed one session using the training and assessment modes to become familiar with the iVR training system. The score in the assessment mode, time to complete the procedure, number of instrument selection errors, number of prompts given by the system, number of positional and angular errors, and number of timeouts during each step were recorded to evaluate the learning effect.

The VR group achieved higher scores than the traditional group (94.67 vs. 87.65). Compared with the control group, the VR group completed the procedure more quickly, with fewer instrument selection and angular errors. No difference in the number of prompts given by the system was observed between the two groups.

The iVR surgical training system showed a better learning effect than the traditional learning method for orthognathic surgery. The iVR surgical training system may have utility as a supplement and potential substitute for the traditional surgical training method.