Abstract
Abstract: :
Purpose: Pix Eyes XLTM (SIMEDGE Corp, France) had been developed as a computerized educational ophthalmic simulator to help medical students and residents how to learn the procedure in laser photocoagulation. We evaluated the learning effect in this laser photocoagulation simulator. Methods: Nine residents, who had never experienced laser photocoagulation, participated in this study. They tried to coagulate the phantom retina of the diabetic retinopathy and peripheral retinal tear, respectively for five times. The following two items were studied: 1) the exposure time for photocoagulation in a certain area of two types of fundus. 2) the ratio of miss-shots (laser on a vessel or repeated coagulation at the same spot) in an area of the fundus of diabetic retinopathy. Results: There were 1) a significant decrease in exposure time for diabetic retinopathy fundus (<0.05) and retinal tear (<0.01) and 2) a significant decrease in the ratio of miss-shots (<0.01) for diabetic retinopathy fundus. Conclusion: The current results suggested that this new ophthalmic simulator can be useful for training residents how to photocoagulate the retina effectively.