Recent Approaches in Laparoscopic Training Phantom Development—A Review

The gap between simplistic surgical model-based training, where the aim is to practise basic skills like cutting, grasping or other movements with simple tools, and practise ex vivo, then in vivo is immense. Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) uses a few small incisions, then an endoscope is inserted into one and surgical instruments into the others. MIS is advantageous in many cases but has drawbacks like angle of view, range of motion and uncomfortable standing positions, several of which can be solved by Robot-Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery (RAMIS). The patient outcome serves as a reliable measure of the quality of surgical procedures, and the ongoing provision of surgical training and feedback plays a crucial role in improving surgical skills and mitigating poor patient outcomes. Surgical phantoms can help to facilitate efficient training. A surgical phantom, also known as a medical model, is a 3D tool that resembles the surgical environment in appearance, texture, or other characteristics, such as being imageable with CT or X-ray. Phantoms are utilised for surgical training and skill assessment, practise of a certain task, medical imaging, and improvement. PubMed and Scopus databases were searched using the keywords “minimally invasive surgery” AND “anatomical phantom”, and from each site, relevant publications from the previous four years, starting with June of 2019 and finishing with June of 2023, were collected. With the addition of external sources and exclusion criteria, 35 articles about surgical phantoms were reviewed. The phantoms described in these articles were categorised according to their usage to determine which topic is the most prevalent in the studies and where the academic community can enhance its research.