Impact of Operative Room Noise on Laparoscopic Performance—A Prospective, Randomized Crossover Trial

Surgeons are often exposed to different types of operative room (OR) noise, for instance machine alarms, phone calls, and interacting objects. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of OR noise on the surgeons’ laparoscopic performance. A total of 30 laparoscopic novices participated in this single-center, prospective, randomized cross-over trial after completing a standardized laparoscopic training until reaching proficiency. Afterward, all participants performed four different laparoscopic tasks (peg transfer, circle cutting, balloon resection, suture, and knot) twice, once under noise exposure (intervention group), and once without any noise (control group). Primary endpoints were the force exertion and motion analyses. To assess the psychological workload the NASA task load index score was used. The error rates varied and were significantly different between the noise and the control group. More complex tasks like the circle cutting and suture and knot task revealed higher error rates concerning precision (circle cutting: P