How Hormonal Contraceptive Use Impacts Laparoscopic Skill Acquisition in Biologically Female Medical Students

Hormonal contraceptive use is commonplace among biological females of reproductive age. Biological females typically have lower testosterone levels than males, and hormonal contraceptive use lowers that testosterone level even further. Higher testosterone levels are shown to be positively correlated with spatial ability and, ultimately, with better performance in surgical skill acquisition. Biological females, particularly those using hormonal contraceptives, may then be at a disadvantage for learning new surgical skills. However, the relationship between hormonal contraceptive use and surgical skill acquisition is not yet understood, and will be examined in this study. METHODS Participants (anticipated n=50) are students of Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine and are participating under approval of the university's Institutional Review Board. This study makes use of laparoscopic box trainers and the peg transfer task from the MISTELS (McGill Inanimate System for Training and Evaluation of Laparoscopic Skills) battery of tests. The control and treatment groups are divided based on biologically female participants who do not use hormonal contraceptives, and those who do, respectively. Both groups perform several screening tasks regarding demographics, handedness, video game usage, mental rotation ability, and ovulation status. Participants then train on the peg transfer task, recording their times for each attempt until proficiency is reached. An ANCOVA, 2 (cycle/static) × 1 (frequency of repetitions) with spatial ability as a covariate, with appropriate post‐hocs as necessary, will be used to statistically analyze differences in the learning curves between naturally cycling participants and those using hormonal contraceptives. ANTICIPATED RESULTS Compared to the naturally cycling group, the group using hormonal contraceptives is expected to require greater time and number of attempts to reach proficiency on the peg transfer task. SIGNIFICANCE The results are expected to support the hypothesis that hormonal contraceptive use is negatively correlated with surgical skill acquisition. This may have implications for informing contraceptive choices of biological females pursuing careers in surgery. In addition, it may inform future curriculum design for graduate medical programs, to maximize learning opportunities for aspiring surgeons. Support or Funding Information Department of Biomedical Sciences Research Seed Fund, Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .