Abstract

PESTANA-TIRADO, Ramiro Alberto; MORENO BALLESTEROS, Luis Ramón  and  GONZALEZ DI FILIPPO, Aquiles. Hand dominance and dexterity: The true essence of a surgery. rev. colomb. cir. [online]. 2004, vol.19, n.4, pp.221-230. ISSN 2011-7582.

The surgeon – the good one – is an artist, an artesan, a technocrat, and a scientist, all at once. We all recognize that in order to become a good surgeon, special traits are required such as intelligence, creativity, discipline, calmness judgement, and critical thinking. Furthermore, profound knowledge of anatomy, pathology and physiology. Most important, manual dexterity, a skill that can not be learned, but that is perfected with practice. During surgical training emphasis is placed on theoretical knowledge, often forgetting that above all a surgeon is an operator, a person who in the operating room must solve anatomical and technical problems. The solution to these problems rest on knowledge and attitude. So, it pertains that during surgical training and then in surgical practice the surgeon upkeeps surgical thought and that, as a high performance sports-man trains months and years for a few minutes of competition, residents and surgeons should practice daily in order to attain perfection. In this paper the authors review the evolution and basic concepts of cerebral function that governs hand dominance, dexterous or left-handed.

Keywords : motor skills; aptitude; suture techniques; surgery; hand strenght; health education.

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