Surgeons who play video games are more skilled, finds research

Worried that kids spend too much time playing video games? Take heart, they may become great surgeons.

Worried that kids spend too much time playing video games? Take heart, they may become great surgeons. New research on Monday found that surgeons with the highest scores on “Super Monkey Ball 2’’, “Stars Wars Racer Revenge’’ and “Silent Scope’’ performed best on tests of suturing and laparoscopic surgery.

Doctors who had played video games at least three hours a week sometime in their past worked 27 per cent faster and made 37 per cent fewer errors on the surgical tasks compared to those who had never picked up a game controller, according to the study.

“For as little as three hours a week, you could help your children become the cyber-surgeons of the 21st century,’’ said Dr James C Rosser Jr of Beth Israel Medical Centre in New York and lead author of the study in the Archives of Surgery.

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The research looked at 33 surgeons attending a course on laparoscopic surgery and found that their game-playing skill was a better predictor of success on the surgical tests than years of medical practice or number of surgeries performed.

Expertise with “Super Monkey Ball 2,’’ which involves steering a ball containing a monkey down a serpentine track while simultaneously targeting bananas, was most closely linked with high test scores.

Dr Myriam J Curet, a Stanford University surgeon who wrote an accompanying critique, cautioned against uncontrolled gaming, which has also been linked with aggressive behavior and bad grades. The study agreed, saying “indiscriminate video game play is not a panacea.’’

–Denise Gellene