Background
The effectiveness of current minimally invasive surgery, specifically endoscopy, is reduced by the inability of current tool designs to apply sufficient “opening” or “spreading” force to tissue. Current forceps designs provide an ability to grasp and manipulate tissue, but lack this ability to spread tissue due to non-ideal tool configurations. The proposed design enables a more efficient transfer of force from the tool to tissue, both in opening and closing. With this improved ability to grasp and spread tissue, minimally invasive surgical procedures can be improved drastically, leading to decreases in surgery time, thereby decreasing the likelihood of infections and other surgical complications.

Invention Description
This tool design provides surgeons with an endoscopy tool that has the ability to both grasp and spread tissue with appreciable force. Current forceps designs provide insufficient force during opening, making tissue dissection difficult. The proposed tool design will provide dissection ability to any surgeon using the tool. Specific applications for this tool would include tunneling through dense tissue or layers of tissue, pushing tissue out the way for optical diagnosis of underlying tissue, and other physical manipulations. This tool has the potential to replace current endoscopic forceps designs due to its ability to grasp and spread tissue with appreciable force, making these previous “single-direction” designs obsolete.

File Number: 3554