Obtaining criteria for ergonomic design of laparoscopic surgery instruments

Nowadays it is known the problems suffered by the surgeons who perform laparoscopic techniques related to awkward postures, muscular fatigue and paresthesia. In many cases these problems can be related to the lack of ergonomics of the surgery instruments. Nevertheless, up to now researches related to these techniques have been focused on the way of improving the techniques and on the assessment of cost-effectiveness ratios. The object of this study has been the improvement of the working conditions of the surgeons who use laparoscopic surgery techniques. This aim has been reached detecting the requirements of the instruments and evaluating their use, obtaining the needs of the surgeons, defining design rules for surgical instruments from an ergonomic point of view, proposing new designs of different kinds of instruments for laparoscopic surgery, and finally, validating these using prototypes and evaluation techniques. Furthermore, surgeons were involved in the processes of detection of needs and design of instruments. The following specific objectives were proposed from this generic aim:—To obtain ergonomic criteria for the design of laparoscopic instruments.—To develop new ergonomic instruments applying the knowledge acquired during the phase of detection of the basic instrumentation requirements.—To contrast the increase in performance and the improvements in working conditions perceived by the surgeons.—To disseminate the results of the study with the aim of making surgeons aware of the advantages of using an adequately designed instrument, and to inform the instrumentation manufacturing companies of the importance of devoting efforts in this direction. To guarantee the success of the study, a consortium of three highly qualified research centres was formed. The Institute of Biomechanics of Valencia has wide experience in the development of implants and surgical instrumentation, as well as in the ergonomic evaluation of both tools and workstations. In its turn, the Jesús Usón Minimally Invasive Surgery Centre is a reference centre in Spain in the research and perfection of new minimally invasive surgery techniques and both have extensive experience in research projects, both national as well as European. Finally, the Department of Graphic Expression in Engineering of the University Centre of Mérida has contributed with its knowledge of product design and manufacturability techniques. This project has generated knowledge that allows to establish design guidelines for laparoscopic surgery instruments taking into account the ergonomics point of view and furthermore, it has been developed designs of different types of surgical instruments which will increase comfort and managing of surgeons.