Scientist I University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, United States
Introduction: State-of-the-art microvascular surgery training is necessary to gain proper skills, create muscle memories, and improve eye-hand coordination under microscopic magnification. This can be helpful during any kind of microsurgical practice in daily neurosurgery. Here we address the feasibility of online microvascular surgery training.
Methods: Six international research fellows from five countries were included. The first author organized four separate online demonstration sessions(total online demonstration time: 41hrs16min) for Baskaya Microvascular Bypass Training Curriculum with six fellows. After each demonstration session, recordings of the session were shared with the trainees to review before their practice. Then six trainees completed their training using our basic microvascular surgery setup and assessed their scores using the Madison Objective Self-assessment Tool(MOST).
Results: All the trainees successfully completed the Baskaya Microvascular Bypass Training Curriculum and assessed their quality with our assessment tool, the MOST.
Conclusion : Our preliminary study shows that online microvascular surgery training is feasible with a basic setup and with the help of the Madison Objective Self-assessment Tool. We believe that online microvascular surgery training is the next chapter of teaching and spreading the microsurgery practice, especially in low- and middle-income countries in need.
