Use Of Eyesi Virtual Reality Simulator During And After Covid19 Pandemic And Its Relevance To Phaco-Emulsification Surgery Future Training Planning

Using a questionnaire of ophthalmic surgeons of different levels of phaco-emulsification expertise during & after COVID pandemic to conclude a common consensus about the validity of a new hybrid surgical training scheme at times of pandemics and post-pandemics.

Design: 

Multicentre, equally allocated number of questionnaires in 3 groups of surgeons.

Participants:

108 ophthalmic surgeons of varying grades of experience in phacoemulsification.

A prospective study using structured anonymized questionnaires that covered a two-years period March 2020-March 2022. The questionnaire is of the mixed open questions and closed questions type

58 responses: 1 surgical session would be sufficient to maintain and improve surgical performance using Eyesi VR simulator alone or live surgery alone or combination of both; 50 responses favoured 2 surgical sessions.

79 responses: Eyesi VR simulator alone can predict in parallel an improved surgical performance on live cases, 29 responses: didn’t support this notion, the difference is statistically significant.

The findings from this study might be very useful in designing future surgical training at times where there is no or insufficient live surgical exposure for ophthalmic trainees and other ophthalmic surgeons grades where the use of Eyesi VR simulator or other surgical simulation platforms would likely to have a pivotal role.

1-2 dedicated sessions of simulator and/or live surgical practice might be sufficient to maintain skills.

The use of Eyesi VR simulator modular reports might be used as alternative to surgical supervisor reports at times of pandemics or in conjunction with these at post-pandemics times.