Life or Death Surgery? Make Sure the Doc's A Gamer!

Oh, it just gets better! Following yesterday’s report that Wii is good exercise for the kids, another pro-videogames report today concludes that surgeons who play videogames are more capable at performing operations than those that don’t!

The study, published in the February issue of Archives of Surgery, a respected, peer-reviewed monthly professional medical journal published by the American Medical Association, outlines a strong correlation between video game skills and a surgeon's capabilities performing laparoscopic surgery.

Basically, this refers to surgery that involved manipulating instruments through tiny incisions in the body where the surgeon's movements are guided by watching a television screen.

Reuters reports that, “Out of 33 surgeons from Beth Israel Medical Center in New York that participated in the study, the nine doctors who had at some point played video games at least three hours per week made 37 percent fewer errors, performed 27 percent faster, and scored 42 percent better in the test of surgical skills than the 15 surgeons who had never played video games before.”

SPOnG knew that extended play with the Wii’s second must-get game (after Zelda) – the superb Trauma Center: Second Opinion (finally due in the UK this April) increased both our concentration span and the steadiness of our hand, though we could not have imagined that it might actually make us into better actual surgeons! We'll ignore the fact that we haven’t had seven years plus intensive training at medical school.

The report supports a growing body of academic research that shows how regularly playing videogames improves "fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, visual attention, depth perception and computer competency," according to the study.