Several recent studies have produced conflicting results of warming up prior to laparoscopic surgery and surgical performance. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether warming up prior to a laparoscopic task improves a subsequent task performed on a laparoscopic trainer.

A prospective randomized controlled trial was conducted to compare warm-up modalities to no warm-up. The study was conducted at a single site, with 44 participants, including surgeons, medical students and surgical trainees. Randomization done within each group.

Control group was asked to do a designated task without a warm-up. Warm-up groups were asked to perform a warmup exercise prior to the designated task. Performances were recorded and analyzed with a computerized software different performance parameters were compared.

Warm-up was a significant predictor of smoothness of the operator's hand movement at the 5% significance level (p = 0.0358).

While there were some improvement of performances between control groups was demonstrated, they were not clinically significant.

This study shows that warming up prior to a task has a positive influence in the subsequent performance in smoothness of instrument movement in surgeons group. The major limitation of the study was the number of participants.

Navaneethan N, Hewett P. Effect of Warm-up Exercises on Laparoscopic Trainer: Improvement of Operator Smoothness. World J Lap Surg 2015;8(1):21-25.