Instant replay: Evaluation of instant video feedback in surgical novices for a laparoscopic gallbladder dissection

Background: Athletes often use video to improve their technique. We hypothesized that surgical novices given feedback using video-replay would outperform surgical novices given verbal feedback in the performance of a laparoscopic task.

Methods: Our study used a prospective, randomized control design. The surgical task involved the laparoscopic dissection of a pig gallbladder. Our participants performed a dissection, pre- and post-traditional or video feedback. Each recording was independently scored by two staff surgeons using the previously validated rating tools.

Results: There was no significant difference between video feedback or traditional feedback groups in their mean overall or task specific scores. Both traditional and video-feedback groups had a trend towards improved performance post-feedback.

Conclusions: No significant difference in performance by both our global assessment metrics or task-specific metrics was observed. Video feedback requires further study to investigate its impact on surgical training.