Assemblable tools for laparoscopic surgery

Abstract

In laparoscopic surgery several trocars are stuck into the abdominal wall and the abdominal cavity is inflated by gas. Surgeons perform surgery in the abdominal cavity by using some instruments inserted through the small halls of trocars. Most of instruments for laparoscopic surgery are slender because they need to pass through a trocar. So large and complicated shaped traditional instruments for laparotomic surgery cannot be utilized for laparoscopic surgery, and therefore high techniques are required of surgeons. Therefore we have proposed a concept of assemblable instruments for laparoscopic surgery, that is, their parts can be disassembled to pass through trocars and can be reassembled inside the abdominal cavity to become large instruments. By applying this concept, we developed a prototype of the assemblable purses-tring sututure instrument. Moreover, based on this concept, we developed various prototypes of assemblable robot hands for laparoscopic surgery. These hands can perform the role of a non-dominant hand of a surgeon in hand-assisted laparoscopic surgery.