ConMed

ConMed Electrosurgery – Altrus® Tissue Sealing Handpiece

Optimizing Technology to Drive Better Outcomes

ConMedChallenge

Innovate a new to the world electromechancial design solution for an endoscopic surgical sealer that would allow precise surgical control for a revolutionary vessel sealing technology.

Outcome

A highly robust technology package that could be used in 5mm trocar. This innovative solution was made possible through the application of both CAD based virtual kinematic models and iterative physical breadboards. The solution also incorporated ergonomically advanced handpiece architecture to optimize surgeon control.

Approach

ConMedOur approach began with breaking the challenges down to manageable sub-assemblies and components, and iteratively building up to the ideal overall assembly. In this case, our team began with the parallel movement of the jaws and worked their way backwards to the handpiece, designing and building computer models and physical component breadboards at every step. Substantial attention was paid to the force required to close the lever of both the 5mm and 10mm handpiece. Our innovation in the mechanical linkage design of the grasper mechanism resulted in a reduction in the amount of force required to operate.

For the ergonomic design of the Altrus® handpiece, we relied on years of surgical hand tool development experience combined with a focused discovery effort on grip architectures and surgeon preferences. The resulting design offers a unique approach to providing a variety of grip points and styles accommodating the large variations in surgeon hand sizes. The stabilization hood offers balance when holding the handpiece so minimum grip force is used, which reduces surgeon fatigue and increases surgical accuracy. These and other ergonomic innovations were designed to accommodate a wide variety of surgeon grip preferences, surgical styles and anthropometric ranges to substantially improve surgical outcomes.