Development of an Innovative Surgical Navigation System for Sacrospinous Fixation in Pelvic Surgery

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To validate the use of an innovative navigation method for sacrospinous fixation in surgery-like conditions as a new teaching tool and surgical method. DESIGN: Two-month experimental prospective pilot study between July and August 2021. SETTING: Biomechanics laboratory academic research. PATIENTS: A total of 29 participants took part in the study: 9 gynecological surgeons and 20 participants with no medical background. INTERVENTIONS: All participants used the 2 mocks-up. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: The experiment was composed of 2 training phases dedicated to improving the hand-eye coordination and suture skills on a training mock-up and of a suturing phase on a pelvic mock-up designed to recreate the surgery-like conditions of a sacrospinous fixation. The surgeons provided qualitative feedback on the bio-accuracy of the mock-ups and evaluated the ease of use of the navigation software. Nonsurgeons were included to assess the progression of the suture performance between 2 experiments performed 1 week apart (session 1 and 2). The main objective for participants was to reach a virtual target and to stitch sacrospinous ligaments. For session 1, an overall comfort score of 7.2 of 10 was attributed to the tool; 14 (42%) surgeon suture attempts and 63 (65%) nonsurgeon suture attempts were accurate (i.e., below the 5-mm threshold). Twenty-two (67%) surgeon suture attempts and 28 (34%) nonsurgeon suture attempts were fast (i.e., in the first 2 quantiles of the duration dataset). An improvement in the nonsurgeon performance was observed between the 2 sessions in terms of duration (session 1: 46 ± 20 s; session 2: 37 ± 18 s; p=.047) and distance (session 1: 3.8 ± 1.3 mm; session 2: 3.2 ± 1.4 mm; p=10-5) for the last suturing exercise. CONCLUSION: This new motion capture-based navigation method for sacrospinous fixation tested under surgery-like conditions seemed to be accurate and effective. The next step will be to design a pelvis model more adapted to the constraints of a sacrospinous fixation and to validate the benefits of this method compared with current techniques