The development of endoscopic surgery for a training simulator

Abstract

Recently there have been several cases of mistakes during endoscopic surgeries. In general, 89.2% of the endoscopic surgery medical errors in Japan are due to skill shortage of the doctor. Nowadays training machines for endoscopic surgery are being used. However, with the current training methods it is difficult to acquire the appropriate skills for a correct usage of the forceps. Because they cannot train how to use the forceps in the right way, the doctors have to depend on their senses. Therefore, a robot for training how to use the forceps is needed. This study describes a new training simulator for endoscopic surgery. The simulator is using the Master-Slave system. This system consists of a Master robot which an experienced doctor controls and a Slave robot which the trainees use. While the experienced doctor controls the Master robot, the trainee only needs to put their hands on the Slave robot. The slave robot copies all of the movements of the Master robot, and therefore the trainees will experience the feeling of controlling the forceps by themselves. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.