Surgery – Instruments – Means for removal of skin or material therefrom
Patent
1995-03-21
1998-10-27
Apley, Richard J.
Surgery
Instruments
Means for removal of skin or material therefrom
604 22, 606131, 606167, 606170, 600565, 600564, A61B 1750
Patent
active
058272976
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a device for transplanting small-diameter hair grafts into the scalp, comprising a surgical cutting instrument including a rotary cylindrical tool provided with a cylindrical hollow drilling tip for cutting out the grafts at one end.
It finds one particularly important, although not exclusive, application in the field of the surgical treatment of baldness by the grafting of natural hairs and, more particularly, in the field of micrografting.
The treatment of baldness by hair transplantation, called the graft technique, consists in transplanting, within the same individual, part of the roots of his hairs located in the crown (still covered with hair) into the bald areas.
The grafts are cylindrical cutaneous fragments obtained by circular cutting-out of the skin with the aid of a surgical cutting instrument as defined hereinabove.
The cutaneous fragments thus cut out along their periphery are, secondly, extracted one by one with the aid of tweezers and scissors and then, thirdly, are reimplanted one by one into respective receiver sites prepared beforehand.
The known surgical techniques cut out grafts of smaller and smaller diameter, for example micrografts, of approximately 1.5 mm in diameter and 6 mm in length, so as to guarantee an esthetic result of high quality.
Unfortunately, these micrografts often remain blocked at the bottom of the drilling tip because of their very small diameter, this requiring them to be manually dislodged with the aid of microtweezers.
Independently of this drawback, the micrografts cut out must be gripped one by one with the aid of microtweezers, detached from the scalp with scissors and then placed in a preserving solution so as to prevent them from drying out during the preparation of the receiver sites into which they are finally placed, manually, one by one with the aid of microtweezers.
These painstaking and very delicate operations run the risk of traumatizing the micrografts and considerably lengthen the operating times.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The object of the present invention is to eliminate the drawbacks mentioned hereinabove by providing a device and a method preferable to those known previously, especially by enabling micrografts of excellent quality to be extracted rapidly and then subsequently reimplanted immediately or almost immediately after their extraction, inexpensively and in a manner which is both simple and easy to implement.
For this purpose, the invention essentially provides a device for transplanting small-diameter hair grafts, comprising a hand-held cutting instrument including a tool-holding body, a rotary cylindrical, tool and a driving assembly suitable for driving the tool in rotation with respect to the body, the tool being provided with a hollow end for cutting out a graft, characterized in that the cylindrical tool is a hollow needle pierced through by an axial bore of the same diameter as the hollow cutting-out end which it extends. The needle is preferably removably mounted with respect to the body. The device also includes means for extracting the graft by sucking up said graft through the axial bore of the needle.
In one embodiment, the extraction means comprises a collector hose, of the same internal diameter or substantially the same internal diameter as the bore of the needle, means for connecting the collector hose in a sealed manner to the rear end of the rotary needle, and means for creating a vacuum in the bore of the needle and in the collector hose, said collector hose being connected to a container for intermediate storage of the extracted graft.
In one embodiment, the connection means comprises a conduit integral with the body and axially connected on one side to the hose, the rear end of the needle rotationally interacting in a sealed manner with the other end of said conduit, said conduit comprising an internal bore of the same internal diameter as the internal diameter of the collector hose.
In addition, the device may also include a hand-held apparatus for i
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Apley Richard J.
Medicamat S.A.
Yu Justine R.
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