Adaptive pneumatic tourniquet

Abstract

A pneumatic tourniquet for maintaining occluded or restricted blood flow into a patient's limb includes an inflatable cuff, a pressurizing mechanism for pressurizing the cuff, a pressure relief mechanism for depressurizing the cuff, a blook pressure sensing mechanism for sensing the patient's systolic blood pressure and for producing a blood pressure output signal representative thereof, and a pressure regulator mechanism responsive to the blood pressure output signal for selectably activating the pressurizing mechanism and the pressure relief mechanism to maintain a substantially constant pressure difference between the cuff pressure and the patient's systolic blood pressure. Thus, the cuff pressure may be varied "adaptively" in response to changes in the patient's intra-operative systolic blood pressure to pressurize the cuff close to the minimum level required to maintain a bloodless surgical field, thereby minimizing the risk of patient injury due to over-pressurization of the cuff.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.