Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-2010
Abstract
Background. An operating room is a noisy environment. How noise affects performance during robotic surgery remains unknown. We investigated whether noise during training with the da Vinci surgical robot (Intuitive Surgical, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA) would affect the performance of simple operative tasks by the surgeon.
Methods. Twelve medical students performed 3 inanimate operative tasks (bimanual carrying, suture tying, and mesh alignment) on the da Vinci Surgical System with or without the presence of noise. Prerecorded noise from an actual operating room was used. The kinematics of the robotic surgical instrument tips and the muscle activation patterns of the subjects were evaluated.
Results. We found noise effects for all 3 tasks with increases in the time to task completion (23%;
P = .046), the total distance traveled (8%; P = .011) of the surgical instrument tips, and the muscle activation volume (87%; P = .015) with the presence of noise. We confirmed that the mesh alignment task was the most difficult task with the greatest time to task completion and the greatest muscle activation volume, whereas the suture tying task and the bimanual carrying could be considered the intermediate and the least difficult task, respectively. The noise effects were significantly greater while performing more difficult tasks.
Conclusion. Our findings demonstrated that noise degraded robotic surgical performance; however, the impact of noise on robotic surgery will depend on the level of difficulty of the task. Subsequent research is required to identify how different types of noise, such as random or rhythmic sounds, affect the performance of operative tasks using robots such as the da Vinci.
Journal Title
Surgery
Volume
147
Issue
1
First Page
107
Last Page
113
Recommended Citation
Siu, Ka-Chun; Suh, I. H.; Mukherjee, Mukul; Oleynikov, D.; and Stergiou, Nikolaos, "The impact of environmental noise on robot-assisted laparoscopic surgical performance" (2010). Journal Articles. 151.
https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/biomechanicsarticles/151
Comments
NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Surgery. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Surgery,Vol. 147, Issue 1 (January 2010) DOI: doi:10.1016/j.surg.2009.08.010.