Development of a Web Application That Evaluates Suture Performance in Off-the-Job Training

Kazuhiro Miyahara; Katsuyuki Hoshina; Takafumi Akai; Toshihiko Isaji; Kota Yamamoto; Toshio Takayama

doi:10.3400/avd.oa.19-00108

Development of a Web Application That Evaluates Suture Performance in Off-the-Job Training

Ann Vasc Dis. 2020 Mar 25;13(1):52-55. doi: 10.3400/avd.oa.19-00108.

Authors

Kazuhiro Miyahara¹, Katsuyuki Hoshina¹, Takafumi Akai¹, Toshihiko Isaji¹, Kota Yamamoto¹, Toshio Takayama¹

Affiliation

¹ Division of Vascular Surgery, Department of Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.

Abstract

Objective: To create a web application that can evaluate suture performance and assess its quality. Material and Methods: We developed the web application using a few cloud computing systems, servers, database, and computing languages. We used 20 anastomosed graft samples for optimizing the application. The images of the anastomosed grafts were captured two-dimensionally. Five vascular surgeons utilized the application to compute the objective score and rank the score of the anastomoses subjectively. Results: Steps for using the application include uploading a two-dimensional image of sutures, tracing the stitch line manually, and pushing the button to have the score displayed. After using this system for more than 1,000 times without server issues or failures, we confirmed its stability and easy accessibility. The system calculated the score within several seconds. The score of the three factors (bite, pitch, and skewness of angle) ranged from 0.25 to 0.76. The error range of the application was acceptable. The interclass correlation coefficient (ICC (2,1)) of the three factors was 0.92. Conclusion: The quality of the application was acceptable considering the low range of interoperator variations in the scores.

Keywords: evaluation; off-the-job training; suture; web application.