Lessons learned from long-term university training in minimally invasive surgery in Spain.

Purpose: Starting from our prolonged experience in university minimally invasive surgery training (1993 to 2005), we aim to analyze the most important differences in participants' requirements from these courses along this time span.

Methods: Surveys' answers from the 6 first course editions (from 1993 to 1999, group 1) are compared with the last 6 ones (from 1999 to 2005, group 2), for a number of items including reasons to choose these courses, opinion about duration of training minimally invasive surgery (MIS) courses, responsibility of training MIS, and opinion about experimental training with animals.

Results: Total number (N) of participants was 341, with 177 in group 1 and 164 in group 2.