Minimally invasive surgical apparatus with side exit instruments

Abstract

Two surgical instruments are inserted through a guide tube and exit via side exit ports of the guide tube. The side exit ports are on opposite sides of the guide tube. A stereoscopic image capture component is at the distal end of the guide tube. Both the surgical instruments and the guide tube may be flexible, and in some aspects the guide tube is retroflexive. The guide tube and the instruments are telemanipulatively controlled. The guide tube has an oblong-shaped cross section, and the instruments pass through opposite ends of the oblong shape, which allows the guide tube to have a reduced cross sectional area.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application claims the priority benefit of the following United States Provisional patent applications, all of which are incorporated by reference: [0002] U.S. patent application Ser. No. 60 / 813,028 entitled “Single port system 2” filed 13 Jun. 2006 by Cooper et al.; [0003] U.S. patent application Ser. No. 60 / 813,029 entitled “Single port surgical system 1” filed 13 Jun. 2006 by Cooper; [0004] U.S. patent application Ser. No. 60 / 813,030 entitled “Independently actuated optical train” filed 13 Jun. 2006 by Larkin et al.; [0005] U.S. patent application Ser. No. 60 / 813,075 entitled “Modular cannula architecture” filed 13 Jun. 2006 by Larkin et al.; [0006] U.S. patent application Ser. No. 60 / 813,125 entitled “Methods for delivering instruments to a surgical site with minimal disturbance to intermediate structures” filed 13 Jun. 2006 by Larkin et al.; [0007] U.S. patent application Ser. No. 60 / 813,126 entitled “Rigid single port surgica...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0052] In accordance with aspects of the invention, two surgical instruments are inserted through a guide tube and exit via side exit ports of the guide tube. In some aspects the side exit ports are on opposite sides of the guide tube. A stereoscopic image capture component is at the distal end of the guide tube. In some aspects both the surgical instruments and the guide tube may be flexible, and in some aspects the guide tube is retroflexive. In some aspects the guide tube and the instruments are telemanipulatively controlled. In some aspects the guide tube has an oblong-shaped cross section, and the instruments pass through opposite ends of the oblong shaper which allows the guide tube to have a reduced cross sectional area.

Problems solved by technology

Although teleoperative surgery using the da Vinci® Surgical System provides great benefits over, for instance, many hand-held procedures, for some patients and for some anatomical areas the da Vinci® Surgical System is unable to effectively access a surgical site.

In particular, “defective” manipulators have fewer than six independently controlled joints and therefore do not have the capability of fully controlling end effector position and orientation.

Instead, defective manipulators are limited to controlling only a subset of the position and orientation variables.

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