Video Game Skills Connected to Surgery Skills

Posted on February 22, 2007

A strange new study found that video game skills may correlate with some surgical skills. The study found a strong correlation between video game skills and a surgeon's capabilities performing laparoscopic surgery. The study was published in the February 2007 issue of Archives of Surgery.

Reuters reports that the study found 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."

33 is a very small study group but it is interesting that the surgeons with video game skills performed so much better.