Patent Grant
10610252
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to medical instruments, and more specifically it relates to instruments related to laparoscopy and all surgery that is performed through tiny incisions.
2. Description of the Related Art
Any discussion of the prior art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an admission that such prior art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
Medical instruments have been in use for years. Typically, medical instruments vary greatly in configuration depending on what procedure that the medical instruments are utilized.
One such procedure that medical instruments are utilized are minimally invasive or laparoscopic procedures.
During a minimally invasive or laparoscopic procedure a tissue removal system is generally utilized to remove any objects that are larger than the incisions that were made to enter the abdomen, such as but not limited to large uteri, large ovaries, sections of the bowel, primary abdominal tumors, and tumors of the pancreas, stomach, kidneys, ureters, adrenal glands, large and small bowel, vascular system, as well as pregnancies within the uterus and outside the uterus. The tissue removal system allows the surgeon to remove large masses of tissue without needing to make larger incisions. Generally tissue removal systems have included some form of morcellation, or breaking the tissue into pieces, in order to remove the tissue through the small holes. This breaking apart of tissue or morcellation has been described using round blades, straight blades, electrical energy, and other means.
To the knowledge of the inventor there has been no invention of a surgical tissue removal system utilizing mechanical energy to force a tissue through a small diameter incision or hole without first breaking the tissue into pieces or morcellating the tissue. The device described herein relies upon the strength and relative impenetrability of an engulfing bag, as well as the mechanical energy of an electric or manually powered device, to force a tissue mass through a strong, small diameter ring harness without first breaking the tissue mass into pieces. Such an invention, as described in this application, would eliminate the risks that are inherent to morcellation of tissue and accomplish the removal of a large tissue without the use of morcellation.
In view of the foregoing disadvantages inherent in the known types of medical instruments now present in the prior art, the present invention provides a new minimally invasive or laparoscopic tissue removal system construction wherein the same can be utilized to remove large masses of tissue in the abdomen or pelvis without the risks inherent to morcellation, including spillage and seeding of malignant diseases. The general purpose of the present invention, which will be described subsequently in greater detail, is to provide a new minimally invasive or laparoscopic tissue removal system that has many of the advantages of the medical instruments mentioned heretofore and many novel features that result in a new minimally invasive or laparoscopic tissue removal system which is not anticipated, rendered obvious, suggested, or even implied by any of the prior art medical instruments, either alone or in any combination thereof. To attain this, the present invention generally comprises a largely impenetrable engulfing sheet or engulfing bag, which is then pulled through a ring harness using mechanical energy. The strength of the engulfing bag or sheet as well as the power of the mechanical device physically change the shape of the soft tissue mass contained therein, not unlike the squeezing of a common toothpaste tube make change the shape of the contained contents, forcing the contents out through a small, solid hole surrounded by a harness. The harness must be elevated a small distance above the level of the skin to avoid catching the skin in the working parts of the harness and associated mechanical apparatus. The engulfing bag or engulfing sheet may be square, square with extended “wing like corners,” rounded, or may have a three dimensional “bag” shape to it. There has thus been outlined, rather broadly, the more important features of the invention in order that the detailed description thereof may be better understood, and in order that the present contribution to the art may be better appreciated. There are additional features of the invention that will be described hereinafter and that will form the subject matter of the claims appended hereto. In this respect, before explaining at least one embodiment of the invention in detail, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited in its application to the details of construction and to the arrangements of the components set forth in the following description or illustrated in the drawings.
The invention is capable of other embodiments and of being practiced and carried out in various ways. Also, it is to be understood that the phraseology and terminology employed herein are for the purpose of the description and should not be regarded as limiting.
A primary object of the present invention is to provide a minimally invasive or laparoscopic tissue removal system that will overcome the shortcomings of the prior art devices.
A second object is to provide a minimally invasive or laparoscopic tissue removal system for increasing the speed and efficiency of a minimally invasive or laparoscopic procedure.
Another object is to provide a minimally invasive or laparoscopic tissue removal system that decreases the need to enlarge incisions used to perform minimally invasive or laparoscopic surgery
A further object is to decrease the risk of seeding a known or unknown cancer throughout the abdominal cavity or other body cavity, which is a risk inherent to removing any mass from the abdominal cavity or other body cavity at time of surgery. While previously described devices may be suitable for the particular purpose to which they address, they are not as suitable for performing the tissue removal without resorting to morcellation.
In these respects, the minimally invasive or laparoscopic tissue removal system according to the present invention substantially departs from the conventional concepts and designs of the prior art, and in so doing provides an apparatus primarily developed for the purpose of improving minimally invasive or laparoscopic tissue removal without resorting to morcellation or breaking a tissue into pieces.
Other objects and advantages of the present invention will become obvious to the reader and it is intended that these objects and advantages are within the scope of the present invention.
To the accomplishment of the above and related objects, this invention may be embodied in the form illustrated in the accompanying drawings, attention being called to the fact, however, that the drawings are illustrative only, and that changes may be made in the specific construction illustrated and described within the scope of the appended claims.
Various other objects, features and attendant advantages of the present invention will become fully appreciated as the same becomes better understood when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like reference characters designate the same or similar parts throughout the several views, and wherein:
A. Overview
Turning now descriptively to the drawings, in which similar reference characters denote similar elements throughout the several views,
As seen in
As shown in
As illustrated in
The functionality of the device is demonstrated in
Use
The purpose of the device is to remove a large mass from the patient's body through a small incision without morcellating the mass. Therefore, in use, an incision in the body must first be made, or the device may be used through a natural orifice such as the vagina, or anus. Following this the mass, if connected to the patient through any means, must be first disconnected from the patient. This can be performed by any method reasonable to the field and anatomic location of the tissue mass. The ring harness is then placed into the incision, which will preferably be the size of the ring harness, with the outside diameter of the ring harness being larger than the incision, preventing it from falling into the incision. The inside diameter of the ring harness should be smaller than the incision, so that it can fit into the incision. The bottom of the ring harness, the portion inside the patient, should meet the tissue mass inside the engulfing sheet or engulfing bag a small distance inside the patient's body, as to avoid catching the internal walls of the patient's body in the compression of the device. The user would then place the engulfing sheet or engulfing bag inside the patient's body cavity through the ring harness, or in some configurations the engulfing sheet or engulfing bag could be placed in the patient's body before placement of the ring harness. The introduction of the engulfing sheet or engulfing bag into the patient's body may be using a deployment tube and a collapsible stabilizing harness, or either of these devices or neither. The tissue mass to be removed is then placed inside the engulfing sheet or engulfing bag, and the mouth of the engulfing sheet or engulfing bag is then exteriorized through the ring harness. The mechanical device described then pulls the engulfing sheet or engulfing bag the rest of the way out of the patient, with or without the use of guiding tracks. This can be done using electrical or manual energy using gears, rolling pins, other means. By the process of pulling the tissue mass through the small diameter ring harness, the mass will be reduced to the internal diameter of the ring harness, minimizing the size of the incision or hole needed to remove the tissue mass. In this way very large masses can be removed through very small incisions or holes without the need for morcellation.
The engulfing sheet or engulfing bag for removing the tissue may include, a series of guiding tracks and may comprise of one or more layers of largely impenetrable materials. These materials may include single, alternating or repeating layers of metal, plastic, rubber, Kevlar, or other materials in order to achieve the goals of flexibility, strength, and to a reasonable degree having the characteristic of being impenetrable. These materials may be fashioned into sheets of mesh, chain like sheets, three-dimensional woven sheets, sheets of connected plates, or other configurations to achieve the goals of flexibility, strength, and to a reasonable degree having the characteristic of being impenetrable. This engulfing sheet or engulfing bag may be of any shape or size, and may be designed to collaborate with a collapsible stabilizing harness, and/or a deployment tube in order to best be utilized to engulf objects with the patient's body. The engulfing sheet or engulfing bag may also contain guiding tracks which may be used to assist in removing the bag from the patient's body, possible interfacing with gears or rolling pins, in another configuration gears or rolling pins may simple interface with the surface of the bag, especially in configurations utilizing a chain-like or mesh-like bottom surface of the engulfing sheet or engulfing bag. The engulfing sheet or engulfing bag is used for the purpose of removing a large tissue mass from the patient's body by compressing the mass to a small diameter through a ring harness.
The ring harness device, made of hard material such as metal, diamond, plastic, Kevlar, stone, or another material, and containing an internal ring, of small diameter which is to be placed inside the patient's body. The ring harness will also have an external outside larger diameter that will be designed to stay outside of the patient's body. The size of the ring harness device will depend on the area of the body being worked on, as the distance between the top exterior ring, outside the patient's body, and the smaller interior ring will need to traverse into the body cavity that the mass is being removed from, the inside diameter of the ring harness should be small enough diameter to facilitate the procedure being performed through a much smaller incision than the largest diameter of the tissue mass being removed, this would include, but not be limited to, removing large masses through 10 mm to 30 mm diameters as is commonly used in many aspects of endoscopic surgery. The device also includes a mechanical device on the ring harness, including one or a series of gears or rolling pins, to pull the engulfing sheet or engulfing bag through the harness with sufficient force to reduce the entrapped tissue to the diameter of the harness. This mechanical device, may be of an electronic type or may be powered by a manual crank type of system to be powered by the user of the device, the described gears or rolling pins bay be on the outside of the bag only, or duplicated on the inside of the bag as well by doubling the ring harness with a second interfacing inner ring harness. The gears or rolling pins of the mechanical device may pull the bag through the ring harness using guiding tracks, if present, or may simply articulate with the surface of the engulfing bag or engulfing sheet either by interlocking with the particular material of the layers of the bag or by using sheer force. In the case of a duplicated set of gears or rolling pins on a second internal interfacing ring the same traction could be accomplished by compression between the two sets of gears or rolling pins. The ring harness pictured in
The system utilized consists minimally of a largely impenetrable engulfing sheet or engulfing bag which is used to remove a tissue mass from a body cavity. The method includes engulfing the tissue mass within the engulfing sheet or engulfing bag, and then reducing the size of the tissue mass by pulling the tissue mass within the engulfing sheet or bag out of the body cavity through a smaller diameter rigid hole or ring, using either manual or electronic power, including the method and process for removing a tissue mass from inside the body of a patient, by engulfing the tissue mass with a largely impenetrable engulfing sheet or engulfing bag, and then reducing the size of the tissue mass by pulling it out through a smaller diameter rigid hole or ring, using either manual or electronic power, with or without the use of other devices.
Although illustrative embodiments of the present invention have been described herein with reference to the accompanying drawings, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to those precise embodiments, and that various other changes and modifications may be effected therein by one skilled in the art without departing from the scope or spirit of the invention.
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| 20140371760 | Menn | Dec 2014 | A1 |
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| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20190201032 A1 | Jul 2019 | US |
