Energy dashboard: post-operative insights into electrosurgical device use

Area of Science:

• Surgical Technology
• Medical Device Analysis
• Surgical Skill Assessment

Background:

• Introduces a post-operative energy dashboard for evaluating electrosurgical device usage.
• Aims to enhance surgical skill assessment by analyzing energy generator data.
• Investigates insights into electrosurgery application differences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the utility of an energy dashboard in identifying differences in electrosurgical device application among surgeons.
• To provide objective data on electrosurgical device use for surgical training and assessment.

Main Methods:

• Developed a semi-automated methodology using intra-operative energy generator and video data.
• Quantified electrosurgical device use via metrics like activations, duration, total time, and applied energy.
• Assessed methodology and device use differences in 48 fundoplication surgeries across three surgeons.

Main Results:

• Achieved 0.95 F1-score in identifying device activations.
• Demonstrated significant surgeon-specific differences in total usage, activation count, and applied energy.
• Observed significant variations in total applied energy during specific anatomical dissections (gastrohepatic and gastrosplenic ligaments).

Conclusions:

• Energy monitoring provides valuable insights into electrosurgical device application variations.
• Significant differences in electrosurgical device use exist between surgeons.
• The energy dashboard offers a novel data source for objective surgical skill evaluation.