Laparoscopic surgery has a special place in minimally invasive surgery, providing patients and hospital institutions important benefits compared with conventional surgery. Trainee surgeons must have adequate training in laparoscopic surgery based on simulators before practice with patients, reducing mortality and morbidity resulting from the learning curve. This study aims to describe and identify changes in skills and surgical times before and after simulator training, low-cost virtual simulator. Methodology: An seudoexperimento (before and after) with 20 residents of whom 18 completed the study, those who received training intended for performing laparoscopic procedures on simulators. Statistical analysis was performed using a univariate and bivariate, and determine statistical significance with the measurement of X2 and Fisher's exact test and t-test for paired samples and Wilcoxon for numeric variables. Results: The low cost simulator shows dependence on tissue handling variable in Exercise 3 and 10, with values of p = 0.035 and p = 0.028 respectively. The 60% of the exercises shows a statistically significant difference in time spent in testing. For virtual simulator, all exercises differ in at least one of the variables. Conclusions: The training simulator both low cost and with the virtual simulator improved surgical skills necessary for performing a laparoscopic procedure.KEYWORDS: Simulation, Laparoscopy, Skills, Training, Residents
