Patent Application
20080281199
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to a system and method for a dual shock source lithotripter. In particular, the present invention relates to a system and method that encompasses both electro-hydraulic and electromagnetic shock sources.
2. Description of the Related Art
Lithotripter technology is used in association with devices that destroy kidney stones. For example, kidney stones are fragmented by passing shock waves through water-filled therapy heads. The procedure creates stone fragments small enough to be expelled in the urine of the patient.
In other words, a lithotriptor is a medical device used in the non-invasive treatment of kidney stones (urinary calculosis), various orthopedic applications, and biliary calculi (stones in the gallbladder or in the liver). The scientific name of this procedure is Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy (ESWL).
Common lithotripter devices include either an electro-hydraulic shock source or an electromagnetic shock source. The shock source includes a device known as a therapy head to perform the kidney stone fragmentation procedure. Interchangeability of different therapy heads is not currently available with lithotripter devices because such therapy heads require precise alignment to establish appropriate mounting connections. For example, because capacitance requirements of an electromagnetic therapy head greatly exceeds the capacitance requirements of an electro-hydraulic therapy head shock source, the therapy head of a lithotripter device is not interchangeable between an electromagnetic therapy head and an electro-hydraulic therapy head. Further, tolerance levels of lithotripter devices do not account for exchanging therapy heads, nor are lithotripter devices designed to accommodate the different operational aspects which may be encountered by the different types of therapy heads that are currently available with lithotripter devices.
Many other problems and disadvantages of the prior art will become apparent to one skilled in the art after comparing such prior art with the present invention as described herein.
The present invention may be better understood, and its numerous objects, features, and advantages made apparent to those skilled in the art by referencing the accompanying drawings.
It has been discovered that the aforementioned challenges are resolved using a system and method that allows the interchanging of therapy heads on lithotipter devices. The following is intended to provide a detailed description of an example of the invention and should not be taken to be limiting of the invention itself. Rather, any number of variations may fall within the scope of the invention, which is defined in the claims following the description.
A therapy head 140 is also attached to c-arm 130 wherein fine tune adjustments may be performed with therapy head 140. The fine tune adjustments allow therapy head 140 to locate a particular target in a patient treatment region. The patient treatment region is a portion of the patient's body that is receiving lithotripsy treatment on patient table 110.
Lithotripsy treatment is an attempt to break up a stone (such as a kidney stone) in a patient. This breaking up of the kidney stone is performed with minimal collateral damage to the patient. Lithotripsy's use of an externally-applied, focused high-intensity acoustic pulse is the guiding principle for such treatment.
An anesthetized patient lies down on, for example, patient table 110 with their back supported by a water-filled coupling device placed at the patient kidney level, for instance. A fluoroscopic x-ray imaging system or an ultrasound imaging system is used to locate the stone and aim therapy head 140 such that a shock wave is focused upon the offending stone.
The treatment usually starts at a lithotripsy system's lowest power level. Treatment continues with a long gap between shock wave pulses in order to accustom the patient to the sensation. In order to break up the stone more effectively, the frequency of pulses and power level then gradually increases. The final power level usually depends on the patient's pain threshold. If the stone is positioned near a bone (usually a rib in the case of kidney stones), then the lithotripsy treatment may be more uncomfortable as the shock waves can cause a mild resonance in the bone which can be felt by the patient.
Upon fragmentation of a kidney stone, the smaller pieces of the stone can be flushed from the patient's body. For example, a ureteral stent (a kind of expandable hollow tube) may be used to pass the fragmented stone from the patient. The process takes about an hour.
Therapy head 140 is constructed such that other therapy heads may be used to easily replace therapy head 140 and to perform other types of lithotripsy treatments with lithotripsy system 100. For example, lithotripsy system 100 may be used to perform either electromagnetic or electro-hydraulic lithotripsy. The choice depends upon the therapy head that is selected for the lithotripsy treatment.
Depending on the medical treatment technique that is selected for the patient, a first therapy head is selected to be moveably coupled within the lithotripsy system 500 as illustrated by therapy head 550. Therapy head 550 may be selected from the group of an electromagnetic therapy head, an electro-hydraulic therapy head, or some other type of therapy head that is designed to provide the desired therapeutic treatment for a patient.
Therapy head 550 is designed to provide fine adjustments to shockwave propagation direction from the therapy head 550 such that a specific target area in a patient treatment region may be located for shockwave treatment. A second therapy head is available to interchangeably replace or be exchanged with the first therapy head within lithotripsy system 500.
The foregoing is provided simply to demonstrate at least one example of a preferred embodiment according to principles of the present invention and thus contains, by necessity, simplifications, generalizations, and omissions of detail; consequently, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the foregoing disclosure is illustrative only and is not intended to be in any way limiting. Other aspects, inventive features, and advantages of the present invention, as defined solely by the claims, will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art upon viewing the non-limiting detailed description.
One of the preferred implementations of the invention includes a software program, namely, a set of instructions (program code) or other functional descriptive material in a code module that may, for example, be resident in a random access memory of a computer. Until required by the computer, the set of instructions may be stored in another computer memory, for example, in a hard disk drive, or in a removable memory such as an optical disk (for eventual use in a CD ROM) or floppy disk (for eventual use in a floppy disk drive), or downloaded via the Internet or other computer network. Thus, embodiments of the present invention may be implemented as a computer program product for use in a computer.
In addition, although the various methods described are conveniently implemented in a general purpose computer selectively activated or reconfigured by software, one of ordinary skill in the art would also recognize that such methods may be carried out in hardware, in firmware, or in more specialized apparatus constructed to perform the required method steps. Functional descriptive material is information that imparts functionality to a machine. Functional descriptive material includes, but is not limited to, computer programs, instructions, rules, facts, definitions of computable functions, objects, and data structures.
While particular embodiments of the present invention have been shown and described, those skilled in the art will appreciate that, based upon the teachings herein, changes and modifications may be made without departing from this invention and its broader aspects. Therefore, the appended claims are to encompass within their scope all such changes and modifications as are within the true spirit and scope of this invention. Furthermore, it is to be understood that the invention is solely defined by the appended claims.
It will be understood by those with skill in the art that if a specific number of an introduced claim element is intended, such intent will be explicitly recited in the claim, and in the absence of such recitation no such limitation is present. For non-limiting examples, as an aid to understanding, the following appended claims contain usage of the introductory phrases “at least one” and “one or more” to introduce claim elements. However, the use of such phrases should not be construed to imply that the introduction of a claim element by the indefinite articles “a” or “an” limits any particular claim containing such introduced claim element to inventions containing only one such element, even when the same claim includes the introductory phrases “one or more” or “at least one” and indefinite articles such as “a” or “an”; the same holds true for the use in the claims of definite articles.
