Does being smart matter? Cognitive abilities and training of simulated minimally invasive surgery tasks

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has benefits for patients, but places additional burdens on the surgeons, because they have to work with reduced tactile feedback and loss of 3D vision. High cognitive ability might aid surgeons in learning MIS, insofar that surgeons with high cognitive ability acquire MIS skills more quickly and make fewer errors, which is why this study investigated whether this is the case and if so, which cognitive abilities are particularly helpful. The role of experience with MIS was also explored. To do this, 34 participants completed several cognitive ability tests and trained an endovascular procedure on a simulator. The results showed that cognitive abilities alone could not predict learning speed or errors, but an interaction between experience and cognitive abilities was visible. While experts with high and low abilities did not differ from each other, novices with high abilities learned significantly faster and made fewer errors than novices with low abilities. This shows that cognitive abilities might be especially important for the initial phase of learning.