U.S. Patent 7784663 was awarded to Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. on 2010-08-31 and describes a “Surgical stapling instrument having load sensing control circuitry.” This patent has been cited 351 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 surgical instrument for being endoscopically or laparoscopically inserted into a surgical site for simultaneous stapling and severing of tissue includes load sensing pressure transducers strategically placed for closed loop control and monitoring. Load sensing within a staple applying assembly (end effector) may provide feedback for preventing firing with insufficient or too much tissue, or to sense appropriate presence buttress material, to deploy buttress material after firing is sensed. Link: U.S. Patent 7784663

This patent was originally filed on 2005-09-30 which gives it a processing time of 1796 days, compared to an average processing time of 1244 in the field. Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. has 2128 total patents. The first named inventor is Frederick E. Shelton, IV of Hillsboro, OR. The primary examiner was Scott A. Smith.

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