Triangular Staple Pocket Curvature for Surgical Stapler Misalignment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional surgical staple pocket arrangements face issues with sharp internal corners causing snagging or stalling, narrow capture areas leading to misalignment problems, and insufficiently steep slope angles resulting in staple buckling.
Innovation Solution
The staple pocket arrangement features pairs of triangular-shaped pockets with steeply angled canyon walls and a smooth, curved floor, providing a wide capture area and nesting design to accommodate misaligned staples, eliminating sharp corners and ensuring a steep slide angle for efficient staple bending.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If conventional staple pockets with sharp internal corners are used, then the structure is simple and easy to manufacture, but the staple leg may snag or stall during operation
Solution Approach 1:
The staple pocket is designed with a curved bottom surface instead of sharp internal corners. The curvature radius is specifically chosen to be larger than the staple leg diameter, allowing the staple leg to slide smoothly through the pocket without snagging or stalling, thereby improving reliability while maintaining manufacturing simplicity
2Device complexity
If conventional staple pockets with narrow capture area are used, then the device complexity is reduced, but staples that are slightly mis-aligned may miss the pocket
Solution Approach 1:
The curved bottom surface of the staple pocket creates a wider effective capture area compared to straight-walled pockets. This curvature allows misaligned staples to still be captured and properly formed, increasing alignment tolerance without adding device complexity
3Area of stationary object
If conventional staple pockets with shallow slope spread over broad area are used, then the capture area is increased, but incoming staple legs do not encounter sufficiently steep slide angle, causing staple legs to stall and buckle
Solution Approach 1:
The curved bottom surface concentrates the slope angle in a compact area, creating a sufficiently steep slide angle that guides the staple leg smoothly into the closed position. This eliminates stalling and buckling while maintaining an adequate capture area, improving ease of operation without sacrificing area
Data Source
AI summary
A staple pocket arrangement on the anvil portion of a surgical stapler device includes pairs of staple pockets corresponding to each one of a plurality of staples to be closed. The staple pockets may have a generally triangular shape when viewed from above. Each respective staple leg is received at a longitudinal end of the staple pocket that provides a relatively wide target area for receiving the staple leg to eliminate or at least minimize the likelihood that a staple leg will miss the staple pocket due to, e.g., misalignment between a first jaw of the surgical stapler having the anvil and a second jaw of the surgical stapler having a cartridge configured to fire the staples. The staple pockets may be arranged in rows, each row of staple pockets being longitudinally offset from another row, such that each staple pocket in a first row of staple pockets is nested with a staple pocket from an adjacent row of staple pockets to make more efficient use of space on the anvil.