XschaR GO: Escharotomy Extended Reality Training System

An escharotomy is a critical surgical procedure where the medical provider precisely cuts through the burned skin (“eschar”) of a patient, to relieve constriction caused by burn wounds. This procedure mitigates the risk of death, amputation, loss of limb mobility, and tissue loss, and is completed on the battlefield and in burn wound units around the world. Traditionally, surgical training has relied on cadaver dissection and supervised operating room training, methods proven to be inefficient due to scarcity of resources and time. Many surgical procedures do not have realistic methods for practicing specific surgical procedures that require the retention of knowledge and surgical skills to perform correctly, and surgeries have a multitude of steps and procedures that can be perishable skills that require repeated practice. Our feasibility study concluded that military and civilian medical school and residency programs are in need of a multimodal training system. Our proposed solution addresses this government and non-government problem, with a multimodal escharotomy training solution that follows the crawl, walk, run system. It includes an interactive and responsive virtual reality game, an augmented reality system integrating the physical trainer to tablet based training, and a physical part task trainer which allows hands-on realistic training.