A new tool for minor-access surgery

The rapid development of minor-access surgery has greatly stimulated the design of new instruments to be more sophisticated and specialized. However, even the most sophisticated instruments available today still have significant drawbacks. As far as grasping forceps are concerned, one of the problems is the conventional mechanical articular joint with its nonlinear motion. With these articular joints, the grasping jaws are applied slantwise against the tissue, and therefore, the grasping force is not uniformly distributed over the grasping jaws. Thus, delicate tissues may slip out of the instrument or may be damaged by too strong a force. The authors´ purpose was to design a technically entirely new instrument as a better approach to the problems of grasping forceps. They call this instrument the elastic jaws grasping forceps. The new design has a simple structure and should avoid the particular drawbacks of conventional laparoscopic instruments and be suitable and functionally useful for minor-access surgery