Report: Surgeons Perform Better After Playing Wii
By Chris Kohler EmailJanuary 17, 2008 | 1:35:45 PMCategories: Education
Revo_2Surgeons perform better after warming up with Wii, says a recent study -- and that study's authors are now planning to develop surgery training software for Wii.
Two surgeons at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona have found that an hour of playing Wii's motion-controlled games improves surgical residents' score on a virtual surgery training tool by 48 percent.
But not just any game will do. Researchers Kanav Kahol and Marshall Smith found that games like Marble Mania, which requires precise, almost imperceptible movements of the wrist to navigate a marble through tricky mazes, work the best.
For now, anyway: The pair is at work designing a Wii game "that will accurately simulate surgical procedures." They believe that it will be especially useful for training surgeons in developing countries, because of Wii's low $250 price. Standard virtual training tools can cost thousands of dollars.
In 2004, a surgeon at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York found that surgeons who played games like Super Monkey Ball -- which has gameplay quite a bit like Marble Mania's -- for three hours a week had 37 percent fewer errors.
A Wii warm-up hones surgical skills [New Scientist]
