A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Heart Rate Variability in Assessing Surgeons' Stress Levels.

Area of Science:

• Medical Science
• Surgical Performance
• Physiological Monitoring

Background:

• Surgeon stress impacts performance and can lead to medical errors.
• Factors like procedure complexity and surgeon experience influence stress levels.
• A standardized method for measuring surgeon stress, considering age and experience, is currently lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically review heart rate variability (HRV) measures used for assessing surgical stress.
• To evaluate HRV in relation to surgeon age and experience.

Main Methods:

• Systematic review of studies from PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science.
• Included studies reporting HRV measurements in surgeons during surgical procedures.
• Focused on comparisons across different surgeries or surgeon experiences.

Main Results:

• Nine studies involving 74 subjects met the inclusion criteria.
• Various HRV measures (time-domain and frequency-domain) were reported.
• Preliminary findings suggest time-domain features respond negatively to stress, while frequency-domain measures show consistent patterns, but heterogeneity is high.

Conclusions:

• Current HRV measures show potential for stress assessment in surgeons.
• Significant heterogeneity and a small sample size limit current findings.
• Further robust studies are needed to standardize HRV use for measuring stress across surgeon age and experience levels.