Surgical instrument for placing suture or fasteners
AssigneeGeneral Surgical Innovations, Inc.
InventorsKenneth H. Mollenauer, Michelle Y. Monfort
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A surgical instrument for use in placing suture or fasteners in tissue at a remote location such as a laproscopic surgery is comprised of an elongated handle having a coiled projection at its distal end. The coiled projection is employed in penetrating and positioning a length of suture or fastener in tissue, for example, as in tissue proximation.
Claims14
A surgical suturing instrument comprising:
- an elongate handle having opposite proximal and distal ends;
- a projecting coil on the distal end of the handle, the projecting coil extending from the handle distal end through a curve of the coil to a pointed tip of the coil, the pointed tip and curve being configured to enable penetration of the pointed tip through body tissue and passage of the coil through the penetration, and
- the coil pointed tip is removable from the coil and is removably received on a distal end of the coil, whereby the pointed tip can be passed through a tissue by penetrating the tissue with the coil pointed tip and passing the coil through the penetration, and then removing the pointed tip from the coil distal end as the coil is removed from the penetration of the tissue leaving the pointed tip in the penetration as the coil is removed.
A method of inserting a fastener into body tissue using an instrument having an elongate handle with a center axis and opposite distal and proximal ends, and having a helically curved projection at the handle distal end that curves around an axis of the projection parallel to the handle axis to a distal end of the projection, the projection having an interior bore that exits the projection through a bore opening at the distal end of the projection, the method comprising:
- inserting a fastener having a pointed tip and a shank extending rearwardly from the tip into the projection interior bore by inserting the shank through the bore opening and into the projection interior bore until only the fastener tip projects from the bore;
- penetrating the body tissue with the pointed tip by rotating the handle in a first direction about its center axis;
- passing the projection and the pointed tip through the tissue penetrated by the projection tip;
- and,
- retracting the projection and removing the shank from the projection interior bore leaving the shank in the tissue penetrated by rotating the handle in a second direction about its center axis.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.