2011CHP

潘政宏 (Cheng-Hung Pan)

Development of a Knot-tying Device for Continuous Running Suture in Minimally Invasive Surgery

可配合連續縫合之微創手術用打結器之研發

In minimally invasive surgery (MIS), intracorporeal suture and knot-tying is very complex and time-consuming. A knot-tying device with turntable disk has been proposed previously. This device could perform winding and passing suture simultaneously inside body by simply turning the disk through a bevel gear, which significantly reduced the difficulty. However due to one end of suture was fixed to the disk, it was difficult to use this device for continuous suture.

Here a new knot-tying device is proposed based on previous turntable-disk mechanism by using a belt to drive the flexible disk with a slot inside. By controlling the belt tension, the flexible disk can be rotated and clamping the suture. This feature enables the proposed device to tie knot in different locations, i.e. continuous suture. The key dimensions in the proposed device are designed through analytical and finite-element method. It is fund that rigidity of the flexible disk and frictional coefficient of belt are two key factors.

An enlarged prototype of the proposed device is made by rapid- prototyping due to precision limit of RP process. Knot-tying and continuous suture are demonstrated by this prototype successfully, which verifies the feasibility of the proposed design.