U.S. Patent 8371491 was awarded to Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. on 2013-02-12 and describes a “Surgical end effector having buttress retention features.” This patent has been cited 377 times by other U.S. patents which places it in the top 500 cited patents since 2010 according to our law firm research, and makes it of the most innovative medical technology patents in the field of instruments. The abstract states:

A piece of buttress material and an end-effector of a surgical instrument including features which can aid a surgeon in properly and quickly attaching the piece of buttress material to the end-effector. In various embodiments, a piece of buttress material can include retention features which can be engaged with portions of an end-effector to releasably retain the piece of buttress material to at least a portion of the end-effector. Similarly, an end-effector can include features configured to engage portions of a piece of buttress material to releasably retain the piece of buttress material to the end-effector. In at least one embodiment, more than one piece of buttress material can be releasably retained to an end-effector. Link: U.S. Patent 8371491

This patent was originally filed on 2008-02-15 which gives it a processing time of 1824 days, compared to an average processing time of 1097 in the field. Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. has 2128 total patents. The first named inventor is Thomas W. Huitema of Cincinnati, OH. The primary examiner was Lindsay Low.

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