Lack of online video educational resources for open colorectal surgery training

Background: Video recordings of open surgical procedures could provide a method for enhancing surgical education, analysing operative performance and presenting cases to a wider audience of surgeons. The aim of this pilot study was to systematically search the World Wide Web to determine the availability of open surgery videos and to evaluate their potential training value in terms of the educational content presented.

Methods: A broad search for open right hemicolectomy videos was performed on the three most used English language internet search engines (Google.com, Bing.com and Yahoo.com). All videos of open right hemicolectomy with an English language title were included. Laparoscopic surgery, single-incision laparoscopic surgery and robotic- and hand-assisted surgery videos were excluded, as were videos from fee charging websites.

Results: A total of 31 relevant websites were identified and 21 open surgery videos were finally included. The characteristics of the patients were presented only in four (19%) videos. A video commentary was present in 12 cases (57.1%) and this was in English language in 11. The median number of views per month was 84.1.

Conclusions: Open surgery videos have a significantly higher number of views per month compared to laparoscopic surgery videos, but current methodologies used to record and render the surgeon's point of view in open operative surgery remain limited.