Video games may boost surgeons' skill

 

 

Playing video games may make for sharper surgeons, a new study shows.

The study shows that surgeons who have a history of playing video games for more than three hours per week may be faster and more accurate in certain video-assisted surgery training tests than surgeons who have never played video games.

"These were surprising results," says Iowa State University's Douglas Gentile, PhD, in a news release.

Gentile and colleagues conducted the study, which appears in the Archives of Surgery.

 The researchers asked the surgeons to play one of three video games for 25 minutes before the workshop ended.

Those games were Super Monkey Ball 2, in which players are timed while piloting a ball through a constantly changing course; Star Warts Racer Revenge, in which players race against others through a winding canyon; and Silent Scope, in which players shoot as many targets as possible in 2.5 minutes.

The top scorers in each of those games made 47% fewer errors, performed 39% faster, and scored 41% better overall in their laparoscopy tests, the study shows.

 

 

Source: Web MD

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