VirtaMed has launched a validated combined mixed reality training platform for hysteroscopy and gynaecological laparoscopy.
The need to learn surgical skills outside the clinical environment has never been greater. The COVID-19 pandemic has reduced medical training opportunities in the traditional apprenticeship method, with fewer elective procedures and reduced access for residents to operating rooms.
VirtaMed’s hysteroscopy training has been updated for 2021 to include 16 cases for MyoSure tissue removal, added to over 50 cases in diagnostics, polypectomy, myomectomy, tissue ablation and advanced electrosurgical resection. All cases include competency-based objective feedback and a variety of pathologies with increasing procedural difficulty, including complication handling.
The Gynecological Laparoscopy simulator has the ability to correctly position the patient, surgeons and assistant for a gynaecological procedure, and to appropriately place trocars. This gives the gynaecological trainee a simulation set up that reflects what they will encounter in the operating room, rather than inheriting positions derived from general surgery training.
Laparoscopic procedures can be time-consuming, and VirtaMed’s innovative approach uses task decomposition to teach key skills needed for ureter identification, tubal patency and ligation, and management of ectopic pregnancies.Organ-specific tissue feedback during tasks such as grasping and cutting, and accurate fluid simulation mirror a real-life experience, allowing for skill translation to the operating room.
Raimundo Sierra, CEO, said: “We are especially pleased to provide such a comprehensive simulation training program at a time when training opportunities have been limited by COVID-19. VirtaMed’s gynaecological simulators have developed so far beyond the initial hysteroscopy simulator that we used to found the company over 14 years ago.”
The simulator will continue to be aligned with the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and European Board and College of Obstetrics and Gynecology training guidelines and milestones.
