Step aside surgeons, teenage boys have some serious skill. How they operate...

If you know a teenage boy who is into gaming – he may have a promising future in robotic surgery...

Researchers at the University of Texas pitted the skills of surgeons-in-training against those of a bunch of high school boys. It turns out the 16 year-old 10th graders had some mean surgery skills and out-sutured the med students. The robotic surgical simulator required fine hand-eye coordination, grasping skills and other surgical tasks such as passing a needle and lifting surgical instruments with the robotic arms. 

According to surgeon Dr. Sami Kilic, lead author of the study, the surgical team of teens was primarily gamers who had unknowingly honed their robotic skills by playing video games for two hours a day, on average. Dr. Kilic says this puts them at ease with new surgical technology and movements required to operate the robot. Where traditional simulated surgery was concerned, the med students are definitely getting their tuition’s worth. They far outscored the scalpel-wielding sophomores.