Virtual lumbar puncture simulators: where are we today?

Ahstract- The lumbar puncture is an important procedure used in different specialties in medicine, such as neurology and anesthesiology. This procedure is considered complex, and the medical students believe they have not enough experience and confidence to perform it. That is the reason why some researchers are interested in proposing to create solutions to provide a better training of this procedure. This review aims to present a comparison between 10 virtual lumbar puncture simulators developed since 2000, where nine of them use a haptic device to represent a realistic procedure. In addition, the physical and virtual components are discussed, including the haptic device, the haptic algorithm, the virtual environment and the evaluations of the simulators. The contribution of this review is to recognize the limitations and strengths to identify some optimal requirements for the design, development, or selection of the software/hardware for the next generation of virtual lumbar puncture simulators.