Lithotripsy Tip Guide Features for Stone Fragmentation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current lithotripsy shafts lack guide features that facilitate the passage of stone retrieval devices, leading to inefficient stone fragmentation and retrieval, especially in hard-to-reach locations within the body, due to smooth tips that easily slip off stones and require extensive anesthesia and longer recovery times for percutaneous access.
Innovation Solution
A lithotripsy shaft with guide features such as beveled, tapered, or sharp protrusions at the distal tip to accommodate stone retrieval devices, allowing for better engagement and fragmentation of stones, and a flexible endoscope system that enables straight-line access and efficient energy transmission for stone breaking.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Object-affected harmful factors
If a smooth lithotripsy tip is used, then tissue damage is minimized, but the tip easily slips off stones and stone fragmentation efficiency decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The lithotripsy tip incorporates guide features (protrusions, ridges, or grooves) at specific locations to provide stone engagement capability, while the rest of the tip surface remains smooth to minimize tissue damage. This local differentiation allows the tip to simultaneously achieve stone retention and tissue protection.
Solution Approach 2:
The tip design introduces asymmetric guide features that create directional engagement with the stone surface. These features break the symmetry of a completely smooth tip, providing mechanical interlocking capability without requiring the entire surface to be non-smooth, thus maintaining tissue compatibility while improving stone fragmentation efficiency.
2Ease of operation
If percutaneous access is used to reach hard-to-reach stones, then stone retrieval is possible, but extensive anesthesia and longer recovery times are required
Solution Approach 1:
The lithotripsy tip is designed to work through existing endoscopic access pathways, making it compatible with both flexible and rigid endoscope configurations. This multi-functionality allows the device to reach hard-to-access stones through natural body orifices without requiring separate percutaneous access procedures, thereby reducing anesthesia time and recovery period.
Solution Approach 2:
The lithotripsy tip can be nested within the working channel of an endoscope, allowing it to be delivered through existing access pathways. This nesting capability enables the tip to reach difficult locations without requiring separate percutaneous access, thus avoiding the extended anesthesia and recovery times associated with surgical approaches.
3Use of energy by moving object
If a rigid lithotripsy shaft is used, then energy transmission is efficient, but access to hard-to-reach locations is limited
Solution Approach 1:
The lithotripsy tip is designed to function effectively on a dynamically flexible shaft, allowing the system to adapt its configuration. The tip maintains its structural integrity and energy transmission capability while the flexible shaft enables navigation to hard-to-reach locations, combining the advantages of both rigid and flexible designs.
Solution Approach 2:
The tip design incorporates localized features that maintain energy transmission efficiency without requiring the entire shaft to be rigid. The guide features at the tip interface concentrate and direct energy effectively, while the shaft itself can remain flexible for access, separating the functions of energy transmission and navigational adaptability.
4Adaptability or versatility
If a flexible endoscope is used, then access to hard-to-reach locations is improved, but energy transmission and stone fragmentation efficiency decrease
Solution Approach 1:
The lithotripsy tip is specifically engineered to function on flexible shafts, utilizing the flexibility to reach difficult locations while maintaining effective energy transmission. The tip's guide features ensure proper energy delivery to the stone even when delivered through a flexible pathway, resolving the trade-off between accessibility and fragmentation efficiency.
Solution Approach 2:
The tip design may incorporate composite material structures that optimize both flexibility transmission and energy delivery. This allows the flexible shaft to maintain its navigational advantages while the tip interface provides sufficient rigidity and energy concentration for effective stone fragmentation.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Enhances stone fragmentation efficiency by maintaining contact with the stone, reducing procedure time, and minimizing tissue damage and recovery time by allowing for effective retrieval and disintegration of stones in difficult-to-reach positions with reduced internal damage.
Implementation Method 1
Ultrasonic or acoustic frequency energy is transmitted down a stiff metal shaft and delivered by contact to a kidney stone
Implementation Method 2
a lithotripsy shaft with guide features such as beveled, tapered, or sharp protrusions at the distal tip to accommodate stone retrieval devices, allowing for better engagement and fragmentation of stones
Data Source
AI summary
An apparatus and method are presented comprising a stone retrieval device insertable through a proximal end of a working channel of an endoscope to retrieve a stone at a distal end of an endoscope shaft, and a lithotripsy shaft with a distal tip including one or more guide features to accommodate passage there through of the stone retrieval device and insertable through the proximal end of the working channel of the endoscope, wherein the stone retrieval device extends from the distal end of the endoscope shaft through the lithotripsy shaft.