Surgeons who play video games for at least three hours a week make 37% fewer mistakes in keyhole surgery and work 27% faster than non-playing colleagues, according to a study.

"I use the same hand-eye coordination to play video games as I use for surgery," said James Rosser, 49, who demonstrated his study at the Beth Israel medical centre in New York this week.

Keyhole - laparoscopic - surgery, inserting into the body a tiny video camera and instruments controlled by external joysticks, is now performed on almost any organ. Surgeons can practise the techniques by video simulations. Dr Rosser said the skill needed was "like tying your shoelaces with 3ft-long chopsticks".

"Here we go!" he said, sitting in front of a Super Monkey Ball game, which shoots a ball into a goal. "This is a nice, wholesome game - no blood and guts. But I need the same kind of skill to go into a body and sew two pieces of intestine together."

The study at Beth Israel and Iowa State University gave 33 surgeons each three game tasks to test motor skills, reaction time and hand-eye coordination. Paul Lynch, a Beth Israel anaesthetist who jointly wrote the report, said such proficiency marked "the arrival of Generation X into medicine".

Beth Israel is now applying the findings. Dr Rosser has a course, Top Gun, in which trainees warm up their coordination, agility and accuracy with a game before entering the operating theatre. "It's like a good football player," he said, "you have to warm up first."