Virtual reality in neurosurgery: development of an educational module focused on intracranial pressure sensor insertion

Overview

Virtual reality represents an interactive, artificially created environment isolated from the real world. This unique technology, through immersion and gamification, has effectively complemented the education of therapeutic procedures and surgical techniques over the past decade. Based on positive experiences with the use of virtual reality in rehabilitation, our team decided to develop an educational model for a relatively straightforward neurosurgical procedure: the insertion of an intracranial pressure sensor. This report discusses the development of the module and the initial experiences with its testing in education. The module combines a realistically designed environment with virtual assistance and the possibility of online supervision by instructor. Its simple controls allow for safe and freely repeatedly practiced operations. Immersion and gamification appear to be key diff erentiators for better retention of information during training, thereby improving the educational process compared to other techniques. This has been confi rmed during module testing by healthcare professionals from the development team and students from the faculty of medicine and higher medical school. We anticipate that the application of this module in surgical training could effectively complement existing teaching methods and potentially accelerate the learning curve for the given procedure in the future.

Keywords:

virtual reality – neurosurgery – Immersion – intracerani pressure – training techniques