Issue |
4open
Volume 5, 2022
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 4 | |
Number of page(s) | 8 | |
Section | Life Sciences - Medicine | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/fopen/2022001 | |
Published online | 25 January 2022 |
Research Article
Quantification of electrosurgery-related critical events during laparoscopic cholecystectomy – a prospective experimental study among surgical novices
1
Department of Visceral Surgery, Maria Hilf Hospital Mönchengladbach, 41063 Mönchengladbach, Germany
2
Department of Surgery and Transplantation, Tübingen University Hospital, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
3
Faculty of Science, Department of Computer Science, Tübingen University, 72074 Tübingen, Germany
4
Department of Nephrology, Düsseldorf University Hospital, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany
5
Faculty of Computer Science, Reutlingen University, 72762 Reutlingen, Germany
* Corresponding authors: jens.rolinger@mariahilf.de; andreas.kirschniak@mariahilf.de
Received:
30
December
2021
Accepted:
4
January
2022
Uncontrolled movement of instruments in laparoscopic surgery can lead to inadvertent tissue damage, particularly when the dissecting or electrosurgical instrument is located outside the field of view of the laparoscopic camera. The incidence and relevance of such events are currently unknown. The present work aims to identify and quantify potentially dangerous situations using the example of laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC). Twenty-four final year medical students were prompted to each perform four consecutive LC attempts on a well-established box trainer in a surgical training environment following a standardized protocol in a porcine model. The following situation was defined as a critical event (CE): the dissecting instrument was inadvertently located outside the laparoscopic camera’s field of view. Simultaneous activation of the electrosurgical unit was defined as a highly critical event (hCE). Primary endpoint was the incidence of CEs. While performing 96 LCs, 2895 CEs were observed. Of these, 1059 (36.6%) were hCEs. The median number of CEs per LC was 20.5 (range: 1–125; IQR: 33) and the median number of hCEs per LC was 8.0 (range: 0–54, IQR: 10). Mean total operation time was 34.7 min (range: 15.6–62.5 min, IQR: 14.3 min). Our study demonstrates the significance of CEs as a potential risk factor for collateral damage during LC. Further studies are needed to investigate the occurrence of CE in clinical practice, not just for laparoscopic cholecystectomy but also for other procedures. Systematic training of future surgeons as well as technical solutions address this safety issue.
Key words: Surgical training / Laparoscopic surgery / Inadvertent injury / Electrosurgery / Patient safety / Prospective experimental study
© J. Rolinger et al., Published by EDP Sciences, 2022
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.