Contemporary Surgery’s goal is to provide general surgeons with “a wealth of peer-reviewed, practical clinical data and practice information”. SURGERYFINDIT.COM attempts to deliver “editorially selected Web site searches” to their end users by editing out what they call “extraneous and unrelated sites”.

Searches initiated through SURGERYFINDIT.COM will direct searches on surgical resources such as associations, peer-reviewed journals, medical schools and major medical centers, and suppliers of surgical devices.

As a sample, I searched for “gall bladder” because I had hired a great general surgeon here in the Dallas area to take out my gall bladder when I needed it removed. Turns out that they have a lot of good information, as evidenced by a search. I could see SurgeryFindIt.com very useful for both people like me as well as general surgeons.

Contemporary Surgery is published by Dowden Health Media.

Dowden Health Media, a division of Lebhar-Friedman, Inc., is a full-service healthcare communications company that specializes in high-quality communication with physicians, advanced practice clinicians, and consumers. Its highly respected, peer-reviewed journals reach more than 300,000 physicians and clinicians in surgery, psychiatry, family practice, internal medicine and obstetrics/gynecology.

Convera(R) Corporation (NASDAQ:CNVR) is the leading provider of vertical search services for trade publishers and manages the vertical search sites of a growing number of specialist publishers around the world.

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The two have found that surgical residents performed better during simulated surgery after playing on the Wii console. They say its due to the console’s "Wimote" control system, which allows players to direct on-screen action using a wireless remote that is sensitive to acceleration in three dimensions.

To test the impact of the Wii on surgical skill, the researchers asked eight trainee doctors to play it for an hour before performing a virtual surgery. Wii-playing residents scored 48 percent higher on tool control and performance than those without the Wii practice.

Now they are developing Wii software that will simulate surgical procedures. A training platform based on the console could be used to train surgeons in developing countries instead of traditional virtual training tools that are usually more expensive.

The researchers discovered that games such as Marble Mania, in which players navigate through a 3D maze worked well because it requires small, precise movements of the remote. "You don’t gain a lot from swinging an imaginary tennis racket," Kahol told New Scientist.

"The whole point about surgery is to execute small, finely controlled movements with your hands, and that is exactly what you get playing Wii," said Kahol.