Cape Town, South Africa (UroToday.com) Dr. Iqbal and colleagues at Guy’s Hospital of King’s College London conducted a study to determine whether Google GLASS, a hands-free optical head-mounted display which shows smartphone-like information to the wearer, can affect surgical performance and increase surgeon awareness of intraoperative vital signs.
They tested its use in 37 participants, including medical students (i.e. novices), surgical residents (i.e. intermediates) and attending surgeons (i.e. experts).
They required all the participants to complete two trials while using a Greenlight PVP simulator; one trial while using a standard vital signs monitor, and another while using the Google GLASS to visualize the vital signs. The researchers recorded response time to vital signs changes, simulation scores, and injuries. Although there was no statistical significance reported when comparing across groups, they found that novices spent nearly double the time and injured at twice the rate as recorded for those of greater experience.
Although no significant improvements in simulation score were noted with the use of Google GLASS, they found that 84% of their participants responded to abnormal vital signs significantly more quickly than with a standard monitor. With these findings, Dr. Iqbal suggested that there is a potential for the use of GLASS and other head-mounted displays in surgery to potentially improve care without negatively affecting the surgeon’s view.
Presented by Mohammed Husnain Iqbal1, Abdullatif Aydin1, Gordon Muir1, Kamran Ahmed1, Prokar Dasgupta1
1MRC Centre for Transplantation, Guy’s Hospital, King’s College London, London, UK
Written By: Shoaib Safiullah, MS4 at The Chicago Medical School, LIFT Urology research fellow at the University of California – Irvine
34th World Congress of Endourology and SAUA meeting - November 7-12, 2016 – Cape Town, South Africa
34th World Congress of Endourology and SAUA meeting - November 7-12, 2016 – Cape Town, South Africa