Development of a Realistic Simulator for Minimally Invasive Veterinary Surgery Training

Introduction
The interest of veterinary in minimally invasive surgery (MiS) has increased gradually for veterinarians and owners in the past few years (1). nevertheless, the learning curve to overcome laparo-endoscopic surgery training challenges requires time and funds (2).

Objectives
1) to develop a high-realistic MiS simulator for veterinary 2) to use a Ct-Scan to reliably measure the average spatial dimension of the canine species 3) to assess the subjective validity of the physical simulator with veterinary surgeons.

Material and Method
Three Beagle dogs were used for the Ct-Scan study (philips Brilliance 6 Ct Scanner). to proceed with it a pneumoperitoneum was created at 11-12 mmHg on each dog. Exact data of abdominal-thoracic perimeter; height and volume of the cavities and of their internal organs were obtained. the data in DiCoM format was processed by aMira® to generate 3D models and a design to create the simulator.
Subjective validity: 30 veterinarians (expert group, n=7; basic group, n=23) practiced exercises of abdominal laparoscopy. these tasks were qualified by surveys of 7 ques- tions with 1-5 Likert scales. in addition, the simulator was rated globally in a 1-10 scale.

Results
SiMuLVEt®, a multifunctional simulator for practicing laparoscopy, thoracoscopy, flexi- ble endoscopy, notES and single port surgery, was created.
More than 60 % of the veterinarians expressed not to have previous experience with simulation.
SiMuLVEt® impressions for the 7 questions in both groups were positive or very posi- tive. there weren’t significant differences between the different groups’ opinions. Global average qualification of the SiMuLVEt® was 8,7±1,1 points on a 10 point scale.

Conclusions
Images from DiCoM obtained by tC and processed by specific software were useful to develop a high-realistic MiS simulator for veterinary SiMuLVEt®. the subjective valida- tion was acceptable. further studies are needed on training programs (3), training and simulation methods for veterinary laparoscopy (4).