What if Surgeons Could Practice Anywhere?

Amadeo Tato Cota Neto, João Marcelo Teixeira, João Barbosa Moizes, Veronica Teichrieb

Abstract: Surgical students must practice procedures in a controlled and safe to make mistakes environment before they perform these procedures on patients. Despite that, surgical practices in these conditions are traditionally limited by the tutor’s time availability to provide feedback and by the usage of consumable materials to simulate surgical procedures on a patient. In this context, we developed the "Hand Guide", a virtual reality application that uses hand-tracking to allow expert surgeons to record a simulated procedure and offer it to students to replicate. Validation with a specialist revealed that the application may be used to teach theoretical content to novice surgical students and to demonstrate new techniques to expert surgeons.