Surgery – Truss – Perineal
Patent
1990-02-16
1991-01-15
Grieb, William H.
Surgery
Truss
Perineal
A61B 100
Patent
active
049845632
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
DESCRIPTION
The invention relates in general terms to the medical observation and treatment of the human body with the aid of endoscopes, which are introduced through a natural or artifical internal duct.
Probes or endoscopes are already known making is possible to carry out observations and/or certain treatments in given areas of a cavity of the human body. Such probes are currently used e.g. in urology and gastroenterology. In their most general present form, the mainly have in a cylindrical plastic or synthetic material tube serving as a catheter and extending between an externally controlled observation head manipulated by the surgeon and an internal intervention or operation end, a certain number of longitudinal hollow ducts for receiving illuminating means, observation means and treatment means.
The appearance a few years ago of optical fibres has led to significant improvements to such equpment by permitting the easy illumination and observation of the working area. In addition, laser probes constituted by an optical fibre transmitting the radiation of a power laser and widely used for obtaining, as a function of the wavelength of the laser light, either a local burning of the undesired body part, or the crushing of a renal calculus. An endoscopic operating probe of this type is e.g. described in GB-A-2 167 688, published on Jun. 4th 1986. This document shows an endoscope having an externally controlled observation head and an operating end connected to one another by a plastic tube having four orifices 3, 7, 8 and 10 and used for the observation, illumination, passage of an operating instrument and circulation of an irrigating liquid for the working area. This probe is completed at its operating or intervention end by a balloon 12, which can be inflated from the outer control head and which permits, following the introduction of the probe into the internal duct of the human body, to ensure a relative fixing thereof by gripping along the walls of said duct.
This document, which summarizes the state of the art prior to the present application, also provides an understanding and illustration of the disadvantages of such equipment and reference will be briefly made thereto hereinafter.
Firstly, an endoscopic probe according to GB-A-2 167 688 is not functionally viable in the state in which it is described in said document for the following reason. When, as is often the case, the operating instrument introduced through the duct 8 is a fibre supplied by power laser, e.g. of the YAG type or a dye laser, the distal end of said fibre is significantly heated during its operation. This phenomenon is increased and makes the operating instrument inoperable when organic deposits agglutinate at the end of the laser fibre, which reaches temperatures from 100.degree. C. (boiling point of the water of the cells) to more than 1000.degree. C. Unless special precautions are taken, the thus enitted thermal energy may destroy the entire internal operating end of the tube and in particular that of the illuminating and observation fibres (the latter being destroyed as from 70.degree. C.) and also the lens by the thermal shock action.
Moreover, an apparatus according to said document and whose tube is produced by extrusion means that the latter will have minimum diameter values of approximately 4 mm, without it being possible to drop below this size. This limits the use of such endoscopes, particularly with regards to the examination of small ducts in the human body such as arteries (coronary arteries in cardiology), veins or the introduction of a probe for crushing renal calculi, whereby in this case the probe necessarily must clear the uterovesical orifice located at the outlet from the bladder and whose normal opening in the adult is approximately 2.3 mm. Therefore, for the treatment of renal calculi using the prior art probes and instruments like that described in the aforementioned British document, the surgeon has to bring about a progressive expansion of the opening, which requires a general anasthesia lasting sever
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