Journal of neurointerventional surgery
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The use of simulators in medical training has been on the rise over the past decade as a means to teach procedural skills to trainees in a risk free environment. The goal of this study was to pilot a simulator based skills course for inexperienced neurosurgical residents to teach the fundamentals of cervicocerebral catheterization and angiography, with the ultimate goal of defining a universal simulator based curriculum that could be incorporated into neurosurgical resident training in the future. ⋯ Participant angiography skills, based on both faculty and simulator assessments, as well as participant knowledge, improved after this didactic, hands-on simulator course. Neuroendovascular simulator training appears to be a viable means of training inexperienced neurosurgery residents in the early learning stages of basic endovascular neurosurgery. Further studies evaluating the translation of procedural skills learned on the simulator to actual clinical skills in the angiography suite is necessary.