Skill Acquisition Process of a Robot-Based and a Traditional Spine Surgery

Technological progress greatly revolutionizes medicine. Robots give the opportunity to reach greater accuracy and thus improve the medical outcome. The results of a surgical intervention profoundly depend on the robot system and on the training state of the operator. Since the learning of a surgical intervention can be influenced by the complexity of the system, these interconnections are investigated with psychological methods. Therefore, the skill acquisition process of a robot-based surgery is compared to a traditional spine surgery. The usage of an appropriate robot shortens the learning curve of a spine surgery due to a decreased complexity and reduces the impact of the surgeons’ psychomotor abilities on the surgery’s outcome. For the design of a surgical system, different realizations must be tested in advance regarding their cognitive workload to avoid training costs learning the operation of the system, afterwards. The methods used are not restricted to surgical robotics.