Enquobahrie Andinet, Horvath Sam, Arikatla Sreekanth, Rosenberg Avi, Cleary Kevin, Sharma Karun
Medical Computing, Kitware Inc, Carrboro, NC, USA.
School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Healthc Technol Lett. 2019 Nov 26;6(6):210-213. doi: 10.1049/htl.2019.0081. eCollection 2019 Dec.
The overall prevalence of chronic kidney disease in the general population is ∼14% with more than 661,000 Americans having a kidney failure. Ultrasound (US)-guided renal biopsy is a critically important tool in the evaluation and management of renal pathologies. This Letter presents KBVTrainer, a virtual simulator that the authors developed to train clinicians to improve procedural skill competence in US-guided renal biopsy. The simulator was built using low-cost hardware components and open source software libraries. They conducted a face validation study with five experts who were either adult/pediatric nephrologists or interventional/diagnostic radiologists. The trainer was rated very highly (>4.4) for the usefulness of the real US images (highest at 4.8), potential usefulness of the trainer in training for needle visualization, tracking, steadiness and hand-eye coordination, and overall promise of the trainer to be useful for training US-guided needle biopsies. The lowest score of 2.4 was received for the look and feel of the US probe and needle compared to clinical practice. The force feedback received a moderate score of 3.0. The clinical experts provided abundant verbal and written subjective feedback and were highly enthusiastic about using the trainer as a valuable tool for future trainees.
普通人群中慢性肾脏病的总体患病率约为14%，超过66.1万美国人患有肾衰竭。超声（US）引导下的肾活检是评估和管理肾脏疾病的一项至关重要的工具。本信函介绍了KBVTrainer，这是作者开发的一款虚拟模拟器，用于培训临床医生，以提高他们在超声引导下肾活检中的操作技能水平。该模拟器使用低成本硬件组件和开源软件库构建而成。他们与五名专家进行了一项表面效度研究，这些专家均为成人/儿童肾病学家或介入/诊断放射科医生。对于真实超声图像的实用性（最高评分为4.8）、该模拟器在训练针可视化、跟踪、稳定性和手眼协调方面的潜在实用性，以及该模拟器对培训超声引导下针吸活检的总体前景，培训师的评分非常高（>4.4）。与临床实践相比，超声探头和针的外观和感觉得分最低，为2.4。力反馈得分为中等的3.0。临床专家提供了丰富的口头和书面主观反馈，并对将该模拟器作为未来学员的宝贵工具使用表现出高度热情。
