Advantages
- One-step procedure with surgical knife incision and trocar installation in place, and enables comfortable insertion of handpiece after removing only the knife.
- Enables consistent creation of stable incisions, reducing complications regardless of surgeon skills.
- Maintains irrigation during ultrasonic handpiece insertion, ensuring heat control and intraocular pressure stability.
- Applicable to challenging cases beyond cataract surgery, including glaucoma, corneal, and converting vitrectomy surgeries.
Technology Overview & Background
Cataract surgery has been established with basic techniques and procedures over the past two decades without significant changes. Surgeon skill is crucial for these procedures, with proficiency being essential but potentially leaving room for instability. Particularly challenging technique is creating sufficiently small incisions with a knife, which can lead to surgical instability and various complications. While vitrectomy trocars exist as instruments to assist and improve incision formation in vitrectomy surgery, their inner diameters and materials are not suitable for the catarct surgeries, and these trocars are too small and lacks anti-heat features necessary for ultrasonic handpieces used in cataract surgeries. Therefore, vitrectomy trocars directly are not applicable in cataract surgeries . Hence, the inventors developed a new trocar system for cataract surgeries, aiming to create stable incisions consistently regardless of the surgeon’s skills. This system improves safety by maintaining intraocular pressure, shortening operation time, and enhancing postoperative outcomes.
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The system comprises a main port trocar, side port device, and anterior segment surgery contact lens (Fig.1). The main port trocar is an integrated knife-type trocar, which allows one-step procedure with surgical incision and trocar installation in place, and enables comfortable insertion of handpiece after removing only the knife. The inner lumen of the trocar is equipped with a membrane valve (Fig.2), which naturally closes after instrument removal, preventing anterior chamber fluid leakage. During ultrasonic handpiece insertion, the valve facilitates irrigation fluid flow through the gap between the valve and the handpiece for heat dissipation, intraocular pressure maintenance simultaneously. Additionally, the side port device is designed for controlling fluid flows, and the anterior segment surgery contact lens for better visuality.
This versatile system is applicable to wide variety of ocular surgeries in adiition to existing cataract surgery, promising enhanced surgical outcomes and patient safety.
Publications
Currently in the pre-publication stage.
Patents
A patent has been filed in Japan and is pending publication.
It is under preparation to file a PCT application.
Principal Investigator & Academic Institution
Toshio Hisatomi, MD, PhD
(Medical Director, Dept. of Ophthalmology, Fukuoka University Chikushi Hospital)
Expectations
TECH MANAGE is now looking for companies to collaborate with the researcher(s) and develop this technology further under the licensing of the related patent(s) described above.
You can also consider joint research using the invention, providing know-how under a confidentiality agreement (CDA), or setting up evaluation or licensing options for a certain period.
Project.JT-04843