# SutureCoach: Examining Vascular Suturing Skills Assessment, Training, and Transfer of Training via Objective Metrics

> **NIH NIH R01** · CLEMSON UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $373,527

## Abstract

Project Summary
The skill of a surgeon is critical to successful patient outcomes. A recent landmark study reported that surgeons'
skill ratings were significantly correlated with clinical outcomes after surgery. A number of studies have
documented medical errors that led to potential medical complications caused by unskilled surgical maneuvers.
One way to reduce medical errors, now the third leading cause of death in the US, is to focus on effective and
efficient methods to train surgical skills of clinicians.
 To respond to the challenges being faced with training the next generation of vascular surgeons, the
Vascular Surgery Board along with other vascular surgery educators have developed a set of core skills for open
vascular surgery called the Fundamentals of Vascular Surgery(FVS) consisting of five skills—knot tying, radial
suturing, anastomosis (end-to-end, end-to-side), ligation and hemostatic techniques—performed on bench
models with synthetic materials towards measuring resident performance. These set of exercises are modeled
after the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Skills curriculum, used for credentialing general surgeons who perform
laparoscopy. There are several limitations of the FVS curriculum, however: rudimentary outcome metrics, lack
of robust feedback for skills training and correlating simulator and Operating Room (OR) performance.
 Over the past several years, our team has collaborated with the creators of the Fundamentals of Vascular
Surgery curriculum to create an instrumented simulator that measures vascular suturing skill. Metrics on our
simulator platform measure key aspects of skilled vascular suturing: needle movement, tear forces, needle driver
motion and hand movement. These metrics provide a rich set of event-specific, multi-modal and real-time metrics
for assessment of vascular suturing. Initial validation demonstrates that the simulator metrics can differentiate
between resident and attending suturing skill including suturing in a simulated cavity (at depth).
 The goal of this project is to provide the vascular surgery community with training tools that quantify skilled
performance on vascular suturing, accelerate training and correlate metrics for transfer of training to the OR. Our
three project aims are: Aim 1: Test the hypothesis that metrics for vascular suturing skill on the simulator
differentiate between expert and novice skill level on a large data set; Aim 2: Test the hypothesis that vascular
suturing training on the simulator with metrics-based feedback will improve skill on the simulator; Aim 3: Test the
hypothesis that (1) training on simulator transfers to the FVS anastomosis task and (2) task performance on the
simulator is correlated with intraoperative performance.
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## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10242761
- **Project number:** 5R01HL146843-03
- **Recipient organization:** CLEMSON UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Ravikiran Singapogu
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $373,527
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-09-05 → 2024-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10242761

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10242761, SutureCoach: Examining Vascular Suturing Skills Assessment, Training, and Transfer of Training via Objective Metrics (5R01HL146843-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10242761. Licensed CC0.

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