Evaluation of Mixed-Reality Technologies for Anesthesia Education

Abstract

Mixed-reality technologies, spanning fully immersive virtual reality through augmented and true mixed reality, have moved from novelty devices to a genuinely evaluated component of anesthesia education over the past several years. This review synthesizes the current evidence for these technologies across the principal domains in which they have been studied: ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia, airway management and cardiac ultrasound anatomy training, and crisis resource management in virtual environments. Randomized and construct-validation studies indicate that immersive training can produce measurable procedural skill gains for spatially demanding tasks such as needle-guided regional blocks and airway anatomy visualization, generally performing on par with or better than conventional simulation-based teaching on proxy outcome measures. Evidence for virtual-reality-based crisis resource management training is more preliminary, and trainee and program-level perception data highlight persistent barriers around hardware cost, comfort, and curricular integration. We conclude that mixed-reality tools are best positioned as a complement that extends training capacity and repeatability rather than a replacement for mannequin-based simulation and bedside supervision, and we identify the modest sample sizes and reliance on proxy outcomes that currently limit stronger claims.