Surgical instrument with flexible end effector

Abstract

A surgical instrument for removing biological tissue during a surgical procedure comprises an elongate shaft and an end effector connected to the elongate shaft, the end effector including an edge configured to remove tissue, wherein curvature of one or both of the elongate shaft and end effector is adjustable to position the edge along a tissue surface when the curvature of the one or both of the elongate shaft and end effector is adjusted. A method of incising target tissue from an anatomic wall comprises inserting a shaft of a surgical instrument into an anatomic chamber of a patient, positioning a tissue-removal device connected to the shaft proximate the target tissue, deflecting an axis of the tissue-removal device relative to a central axis of the shaft, and shaving a surface of the anatomic wall by moving the tissue-removal device in a deflected state along the target tissue.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.