Fixation clamp
AssigneeStryker European Operations Holdings LLC
InventorsAxel Bernhard Cremer, Beat Mürner, Umesh Verma, Usha Mathur
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A fixation clamp for use in an external fixation system for holding bone fragments adjacent to each other with the help of fixation elements has at least one clamping assembly having a pair of jaws with at least two different size grooves to accommodate a bone fixation element such as a pin or rod. An alternate clamping assembly has at least three grooves wherein at least two of the grooves have a different size adapted to accommodate a correspondingly sized bone fixation element such as a bone pin. The longitudinal axes of the grooves define a polygon. The jaw pairs can be rotated about a central longitudinal axis to present different size reception cavities towards the pins or rocks depending on their diameter.
Claims10
A method of assembling an external fixation frame, comprising:
- clamping a first rod between first and second jaw members of a first clamping assembly and within a first cavity defined by respective first grooves of the first and second jaw members, the first rod and first clamping assembly forming at least a portion of an external fixation frame;
- removing the first rod from the first cavity;
- rotating the first clamping assembly about a locking axis;
- and
- clamping a second rod between the first and second jaw members and within a second cavity defined by respective second grooves of the first and second jaw members, the second rod having a larger cross-sectional dimension than the first rod, the second cavity having a larger cross-sectional dimension than the first cavity, the first and second cavities each defining a respective longitudinal axis, the longitudinal axis of the first cavity being oriented at an oblique angle relative to the longitudinal axis of the second cavity.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.