Antonio Gangemi, a fourth year
surgery resident at UIC, sits in front
of a monitor displaying what appears
to be a video game.
Manipulating the
controls in his hands, Gangemi picks
up simulated crates and dominoes and
stacks them on top of each other...
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Antonio Gangemi, a fourth year
surgery resident at UIC, sits in front
of a monitor displaying what appears
to be a video game.
Manipulating the
controls in his hands, Gangemi picks
up simulated crates and dominoes and
stacks them on top of each other while
a clock in the corner of the monitor
counts down the time.
But Gangemi
is not playing around; he is using a
simulation called the dVTrainer to
practice handling controls and pedals
typically found in a $2 million da
Vinci robot, which enables surgeons
to perform operations by guiding
robotic arms, and he’s Iearning how to
wield surgical instruments that would
normally be placed inside a patient.
Despite the rapid growth of robotic
surgery and its clinical applications,
and the increasing acceptance of
this technology as a tool of the
modern operating room, training
and education in the field is still at an
early stage.
Training new surgeons in
robotic surgery is expensive, whether
the robot is in a dedicated laboratory
or is shar
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