Gamers Make Better Surgeons

John Biggs

Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... → Learn More

Tuesday, February 20th, 2007


A study appearing in the Archives of Surgery has found a strong correlation between gaming skills and strong surgical skills. Surprise, surprise.

After looking at 33 doctors at the Beth Israel Medical Center, the study’s authors discovered that those who played video games did better at 36-hour surgical skills test. They also proposed that video games are a great way to train brain surgeons.

Now, the real question here is has surgery gotten “better” since the advent of video games. Before the thumb-tweaks of Dig Dug, there wasn’t much out there to strengthen a doctor’s hand-eye coordination except maybe bug collecting. Any surgeons out there who can shed some light on this?

Now if only Trauma Center had been around when I was choosing my college major, I might be a doctor right now.

Surgeons who play video games more skilled: study [Yahoo]

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