Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
Dear Editor,
We read with great interest the letter by Mungmunpuntipantip and Wiwanitkit [4], who raised concerns about the use of online anatomy education. In this letter, it was highlighted that social media can cause adverse health effects (visual and hearing problems, or even seizures) to students. Respecting the authors’ opinion [4], we would like to point out that the paper discussed [1] by the authors did not focus on the use of social media in anatomy teaching. To the best of our knowledge, the literature lacks evidence that anatomy education, via social media, is significantly associated with adverse health effects to students. In contrast, we would like to highlight that the risk of students’ health problems seems to be associated with the mode of delivery of digital technology. There is evidence that the use of virtual or augmented reality (VR or AR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) in anatomy education has been accompanied by a higher risk of health complications, compared to the use of two-dimensional (2D) screens [2, 3]. In Moro et al. study [3], the participants, divided into three groups, were randomly allocated to receive anatomy teaching via a VR HMD (group 1), an AR 2D screen (group 2) and a tablet-based application (group 3). The examinations scores after the educational intervention, did not significantly differ. However, during the classes, the group 1 (VR HMD) was found significantly more likely to suffer from dizziness, headaches, and blurred vision, compared to the other groups which experienced 2D screen-based teaching. The participants of another study [2] were taught brain anatomy after having been randomly divided into two groups: the first one received teaching via an AR HMD and the second via an AR mobile handheld tablet device. Although the examinations scores were insignificantly different, the first group (AR HMD) experienced dizziness, in a significantly greater extent than the second.
Thus, we consider that the mode of delivery of digital technology in anatomy education does play a role in the risk of adverse health effects. Social media, or other digital anatomy teaching modalities, delivered via 2D screens, seem to carry a considerably lower risk for students’ health in comparison with HMDs. This fact does not mean that the educational benefit of HMDs should be ignored, but rather that anatomy teachers should use this technology with caution.
Further research is needed to clarify to what extent the use of digital technology may be safe. However, at present, it seems that social media, or other digital technologies delivered via 2D screens are less likely to cause adverse health effects than HMDs, when they are used for anatomy teaching purposes.
Data availability
Literature data are available if requested.
References
Hoehe MR, Thibaut F (2020) Going digital: how technology use may influence human brains and behavior. Dialogues Clin Neurosci 22:93–97. https://doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2020.22.2/mhoehe
Moro C, Phelps C, Redmond P, Štromberga Z (2021) HoloLens and mobile augmented reality in medical and health science education: a randomised controlled trial. Br J Educ Tech 52:680–694. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13049
Moro C, Štromberga Z, Raikos A, Stirling A (2017) The effectiveness of virtual and augmented reality in health sciences and medical anatomy. Anat Sci Educ 10:549–559. https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.1696
Mungmunpuntipantip R, Wiwanitkit V (2022) Distance anatomy education during the COVID-19 pandemic: correspondence. Surg Radiol Anat 44:333. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00276-022-02897-9
Funding
Open access funding provided by HEAL-Link Greece. No funding was received.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
DC designed the paper, DC and MP wrote the paper, TD and GT edited the paper, KN supervised the paper. All authors approved the final submitted draft.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Conflict of interest
None.
Ethical approval
This declaration is not applicable.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Chytas, D., Piagkou, M., Demesticha, T. et al. Considerations for the risk of adverse health effects of different anatomy education modalities. Surg Radiol Anat 44, 1545–1546 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00276-022-03048-w
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00276-022-03048-w