Last time, politicians were calling for the censorship of video games, accusing the “violence in the media” of playing some kind of role in the Sandy Hook massacre, despite evidence saying otherwise.
Well, guess what. Video games can be lifesavers, for real:
According to a new study from researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston – a world leader in minimally invasive and robotic surgery – the superior hand-eye coordination and hand skills gained from hours of repetitive joystick maneuvers mimic the abilities needed to perform today’s most technologically advanced robotic surgeries.
To offer insight on how best to train future surgeons, the study placed high school and college students head to head with resident physicians in robotic surgery simulations. The results, presented at the American Gynecologic Laparoscopists’ 41st Annual Global Congress on Minimally Invasive Gynecology in Las Vegas, were surprising.
Both high school sophomores who played video games on average two hours per day and college students who played four hours of video games daily matched, and in some cases exceeded, the skills of the residents on parameters that included how much tension the subjects put on their instruments, how precise their hand-eye coordination was and how steady their grasping skills were when performing surgical tasks such as suturing, passing a needle or lifting surgical instruments with the robotic arms.
I guess we’d rather have Nelson Mandela surgery done by a surgeon who is also a gamer, than just a resident, right?
(via Xataca Ciencia)
