Determining the difficulty level of cases for temporal bone surgery training in virtual reality simulation

As anatomical variations influence surgical difficulty, trainees must be exposed to a range of cases to gain mastery. While most surgeons believe they can predict the difficulty of a temporal bone, it is unclear whether these predictions align with trainee performance.

We hypothesized that expert judgement of temporal bone difficulty would correlate with trainee surgeons' performance in a VR environment.

Ten expert surgeons were recruited to assess the difficulty level of the VR bones using the developed difficulty scale. Thirty participants (10 medical students, 10 ENT trainees, and 10 consultants) performed mastoidectomy on these VR specimens. These dissections were scored by a blinded expert surgeon. We compared the correlation of expert-rated difficulty and surgical performance across experience levels.

Expert ratings of bone difficulty showed high inter-rater reliability. Temporal bone dissection performance reflected experience: consultants performed best, followed by trainees, then medical students. Interestingly, trainees performed well on some expert-perceived difficult anatomical characteristics.

Anatomical variation-based difficulty ratings appear not to predict trainee performance on temporal bone dissection. This suggests difficulty may be better judged by actual surgical performance, which is feasible in VR environments and 3D printed models where standardised anatomy can be replicated.